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゚┈┈⋆.° my written works
— 𝐋𝐈𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐒 —
๑ off campus
๑ macklin celebrini⁷¹ | to be read | tbr²
๑ will smith² | to be read | tbr²
๑ sidney crosby⁸⁷ | to be read
๑ arber xhekaj⁷²
๑ juraj slafkovský²⁰
๑ cole caufield¹³
๑ connor bedard⁹⁸
๑ ben kindel⁸¹
๑ fraser minten⁹³ | to be read
๑ nathan mackinnon²⁹
๑ matt rempe⁷³
๑ william eklund⁷²
๑ multi/other fics | to be read
something to lose - part one - sc87
pairing -> sidney crosby x singlemom!reader
word count -> 4.1k
summary -> after ten years of raising your little boy alone in pittsburgh, you've has built a solid, steady life—and an mile high wall around your heart. but when local legend sidney crosby unexpectedly walks into your little bookstore, his quiet consistency slowly dismantles every defense you have. just as you begin to believe in a future you never thought possible, a bitter ghost from your past threatens to tear your world apart, forcing you to choose: run from the fear of abandonment, or trust the man who will stop at nothing to protect the family he’s chosen.
warnings -> anxiety. abandonment. single parenting. slight age gap? but it never really comes up. slow burn.
msb yaps -> ahhhhhhhhh it's heeeeeere! i'm a little nervy to start posting this one since it's totally not finished yet but i'm about half way through with a solid outline, so we should be okay. i'm going to try to to two updates a week, but we'll see! this series is so very dear to me, being a single mom myself, i've drawn a lot from my own experiences and feelings so i hope you guys like it. if you want to be added to the tag list, lmk! divider is from @pxrce-lain
series master list | main master list | lets yap
Sidney Crosby had spent so much time sitting in a kitchen that didn’t belong to him, he might as well have had his name on the mortgage. He knew the code to the garage and the front door, Nicky Malkin called him ‘Uncle Sid’, and Anna Malkin always had a spare place setting ready for when he inevitably crashed family dinner at least twice a week.
Today though? Today, Sidney was using the Malkin household as a sanctuary. He sat on a high bar stool at the granite island, his hands wrapped around a tepid cup of coffee that he’d barely touched. He was in his off-day uniform of a faded Penguins hoodie, dark denim jeans, and a black baseball hat turned backwards.
Across the counter, Anna Malkin was packing 10-year-old Nicky’s snack for practice while stirring something on the stove, her sharp eyes tracking over Sidney’s slumped shoulders with mild amusement.
“I’m just saying.” Sidney mutters, palming at the back of his neck. “I think I’m ready to officially give up. No more blind dates. No more approaching women in the grocery store. Nothing. I’m retiring from dating completely.”
From his spot in the living room, Geno Malkin lets out a sharp bark of a laugh, not even bothering to look up from his phone. “You are not even forty! You cannot retire from dating, you are not old man yet. Close, but not yet.”
“Shut up.” Sidney laughs, shaking his head. He turns back to Anna, groaning softly. “She asked me to get her suite tickets for her best friend’s boyfriend and his beer league team before our drinks had even come. By the time we got the dessert menu, she was asking about WAG jackets and how playoff tickets worked. She didn’t ask a single question about me, just focused on the jersey.”
Anna sighs deeply, leaning against the counter and crossing her arms. She knew the reality of Sidney’s life better than most because she’d been a witness to it for nearly two decades. For twenty years, he had been the league’s golden boy, the face of a franchise, a living legend in a city that treated hockey like a religion.
As Sidney’s career crept towards its twilight, the empty rooms in house felt a little bigger, the quiet after a game felt a little heavier. He’d watched his best friends go home to chaotic, beautiful families, to wives who loved them when they were bruised and defeated, and to kids who just wanted their dads.
Finding someone who saw the man that wore the number 87, someone who wanted Sidney from Cole Harbor, not Sidney Crosby, living legend, was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
“It’s the nature of the league, Sidney.” Anna says gently, her Russian accent still thick despite living in the states for years now. “The money and glamour attract a certain crowd and you are too polite. You stay for the whole dinner when you should leave before drinks.”
“I can’t just leave, Anna, that’s rude.” Sid mumbles, taking a sip of his disappointingly cold coffee.
“You are too Canadian for your own good.” Geno shouts from the living room.
Sidney smiles into his mug and rolls his eyes. “I just…I don’t know. I want something normal. I want to meet someone who doesn’t care about my points average or my contract or what I can do for them. I want someone who likes spending time with me because they like me. A normal life. I hate that I feel like I had to give that up just to play the game I love.”
Anna freezes for a fraction of a second as she listens to Sidney whine. A sharp spark flares in her dark eyes at the same time a calculating expression flickers across her features so quickly no one else catches it.
Sidney wanted someone normal? Someone who was the actual living definition of ‘real’ and was too busy to care about what number he wore on his jersey or how many zeros were attached to his contract?
As Anna watches Sidney pout into his mug, she can’t believe she hadn’t thought of this sooner.
She knew someone.
“Well…” Anna says slowly, conniving grin slipping across her face.
Geno spots the look a million miles away. He sits forward in the armchair, eyes narrowing at his wife.
“If you want a distraction from your terrible dating life, you could make yourself useful and do me a huge favor today.”
Sidney looks up, grateful for an excuse to get out of his head and be useful. “Of course, what do you need?”
“I’m helping with the silent auction for the Penguins Foundation gala that’s coming up soon." Anna taps at her phone, pulling the maps app up on her phone. “Most of the donations are being delivered to the front offices but there’s one that I haven’t been able to coordinate a time because she’s always so busy. I promised her I’d save her a trip and send someone to pick it up from the store today but I need to get Nicky to practice.”
“I’ll go and get it.” Sidney shrugs, happy to have something to occupy his afternoon.
Anna glances over at him, offering an innocently sweet smile that her husband sees straight through. “You are a lifesaver Sidney Crosby!”
“Anything to help my favorite Russian.” Sidney says, stretching his shoulders as he stands.
Geno makes an affronted noise that sounds like a pig grunting. “I thought I was your favorite Russian!”
Sidney smiles wide, eyes crinkling at the corners as he fishes his carneys out of his pocket. “Your wife is prettier.” He turns to Anna. “Where is this place?”
Anna reaches for the notepad she keeps on the counter, scribbling down a name and address in her neat handwriting. She tears off the piece of paper and hands it to him, her smile widening just a fraction too much.
“It’s this adorable little bookstore called Pine and Page, you're going to love it!" Anna says, watching him pocket the slip of paper.
October had brought a biting chill to the city. It was the kind of sharp, biting cold that turned your breath into little white puff clouds and sent crunchy leaves scraping down sidewalks.
Tucked away on a quiet, narrow street lined with a handful of family-owned brick storefronts is one of the two pride and joys of your life: Pine & Page. It sits on the corner, its warm red brick facade sitting like a beacon of warmth in an otherwise blustery Thursday afternoon.
Inside, your shop was decorated for your favorite time of year. Honey-toned sunbeams filtered through the massive front window, illuminating the reclaimed hardwood floors that were worn smooth and full of character.
You had specifically designed the entire space to encourage people to slow down.
Towering wooden bookshelves, stuffed to the brim with colorful spines, stretched all the way to the high ceiling. Low-hanging pendant lights cast a warm golden glow over the room while an ancient wooden ceiling fan turned slowly above the cash register near the back of the main room.
Deep in the heart of the store, display tables were artfully crowded with stacks of new releases, woven baskets of paperbacks, and large ceramic pitchers with bright sunflowers in full bloom. On the outside wall, near the back of the store, was a massive oak mantle that framed an old fireplace that hadn’t worked since before you were born. You kept it decorated for the seasons, this time of year it was covered with delicate dried garlands and golden flecked candles that smelled like vanilla and cashmere.
Pine & Page was your sanctuary, your safe space that you had built from the ground up as a labor of love and devotion.
Right now though? Right now your carefully curated peaceful safe haven was being thoroughly tested by a ten-year-old little boy wielding a hockey stick and a plan to drive you up a wall.
“Cooper! Can we not use the fire place as a place to practice your wrist shot, please?” You call out, not looking up from your laptop that sat open on the cash register. “And I think you forgot to air out your bag again, it stinks!”
“It doesn’t stink, Mom! My bag smells like victory!” Cooper yells back from the history section as you hear what you assumed was a puck ping off of the metal grate that sat in front of the fireplace.
“Cooper Michael!” You shout, a warning that Cooper knows well.
He comes scurrying towards you, his giant hockey bag slung over one shoulder, wearing a mischievous grin that was entirely too confident for a boy who was about to be scolded.
"Do you think Nicky’s dad is going to be at practice today? He said he’d bring everyone on the team a puck from the Penguins practice the next time he saw us!”
“I’m sure Mr. Malkin will be there if he doesn’t have practice himself.” You say, adding a few more new releases to your online cart, trying to plan inventory for the upcoming holiday season.
Your gaze sweeps over the main floor of your store, taking a brief second to appreciate how pretty the afternoon sunlight looked as it glittered through the stained glass ‘Pine & Page’ sign that sat in the front window of the shop. You glance at the clock that sits on the wall behind you and sigh.
“Where is your grandfather? Your practice starts in 45 minutes and you take forever to get dressed.”
As if you’d conjured him out of thin air, your mouth is barely closed before the brass bell chimes, your dad and a crisp gust of October wind bursting through the door.
“Alright, where is my star defenseman grandson! It’s time to get you to practice, kiddo. Let’s move it!” Your dad calls out, clapping his hands together as he brings the smell of leaves in with him.
“Grandpa!” Cooper drops his bag by the counter before sprinting over to give him a quick hug.
“You got your water bottle and inhaler, Coop?” You ask, giving up on ordering for the time being to fold yourself into your dad’s arms. “Thank you for taking him today, Dad.”
Your dad pulls back, smiling at you warmly. “Any time I get to spend with my favorite grandson is time well spent.”
“I’m your only grandson, Grandpa!” Cooper giggles at your side as he shakes his water bottle at you. “My inhaler is in my pocket!”
You plant a quick kiss on Cooper’s forehead, despite him trying to duck away at the last minute. “Be good for Grandpa. Listen to your coaches!”
Cooper beams up at you, his gap-toothed smile making your chest ache with affection for the little boy who held your whole heart in his hand.
“I will Mom! Love you!”
"Love you more!"
With a whirlwind of energy that rivals a category four tornado, Cooper and your dad burst back out the front door, leaving the shop suddenly and jarringly quiet.
You let out a long breath, a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth as you watch them walk past the front door towards where your dad’s SUV is parked on the street. Turning back to the counter, you tap at the trackpad of your laptop, determined to finish your holiday ordering before you have to close for the night. The after school rush had finally cleared out, leaving you entirely alone in the golden, sunlit warmth of your favorite place on earth.
The brass bell above the door chimes again not five minutes later, letting in another swirl of chilly air.
“Did you forget your mouthguard again?” You ask without looking up, fully expecting that Cooper had sprinted back inside to grab something he’d forgotten.
“Uh…No? I hope I don’t have a need for a mouthguard while in a bookstore though so…” A quiet, polite voice answered, sounding entirely unsure of what he was getting himself into.
Your hands freeze on the keyboard, your head snapping up.
Standing just inside the front door was the absolute last person you would have ever expected to walk into your store that day. Or any day, for that matter. He was broad-shouldered and solid with massive legs the size of small tree trunks, dressed casually in a hoodie and jeans. A few stray pieces of dark hair poked out from under a backwards baseball hat, giving him a bit of a rumpled look that caught you off guard.
The strong jaw, his distinct and intently focused hazel eyes - he looked exactly like the man you’d seen on banners at the PNG arena downtown.
Sidney Crosby had just walked into your little corner of the world.
He had his hands tucked casually into his front pockets, looking around the sunlit space with a quiet, almost cautious curiosity. His eyes tracked the warm amber string lights that hung from the ceiling and the vintage wood detailing with an appreciative expression before his gaze finally landed on where you were standing behind the counter.
“Hi.” He says, taking a few steps towards you. His voice was softer than you’d expected, less intense and lower than what it sounded like on the interviews Cooper watched of him religiously. “Sorry to startle you. I’m looking for the owner? Anna Malkin sent me.”
For the second time in less than thirty seconds, Sidney caught you off guard with the polite cadence of his tone.
“I’m the owner.” Your fingers dig into the wooden countertop of the cash register in an attempt to ground yourself as you paste what you hope is a genuine smile on your face. “How can I help you, Mr. Crosby?”
Sidney stopped at the counter, his hands still tucked into the pockets of his jeans. Up close, his size was slightly dizzying. He was all broad shoulders and quiet strength, the way his jeans were fitted just enough to show off what playing hockey for over three decades did to a person’s body.
There was something missing though: an ego.
You knew the stories that circulated around town, had heard Anna talk about him countless times but you’d always thought those stories were a bit like your dad’s fishing stories: more than slightly over exaggerated. Standing in front of you now though, in a slouchy hoodie and beat up baseball hat as he palmed at the back of his neck, Sidney seemed almost sheepish.
“Mr. Crosby is my father.” When he smiled at you, his eyes crinkled at the corners like he’d just heard the funniest joke ever told. “Sidney is just fine, really. Or Sid if you're feeling lazy. Anna sent me, she said you were donating a big gift basket for the Penguins Foundation's silent auction. I was headed to the arena offices anyway so she asked me to swing by and pick it up since she hadn’t been able to find a time to get over here herself.”
You laugh softly, shaking your head. “She mentioned she was going to get someone from the team to pick it up this afternoon but I certainly didn’t expect her to send the captain to do her bidding.”
Sidney lets out a genuine laugh, “Anna is scarier than half the players in the NHL. There’s a reason Geno won’t argue with her under any circumstances.”
“She’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure.”
Sidney leans a hip against the counter, “So, how do you know Anna?”
“Oh, we’ve known each other for a few years. My son Cooper has played on the same team as Nicky for…” You pause, counting in your head. “Three seasons now? This may be the fourth. After the age of five, everything kind of starts to blur together.”
“Cooper? You’re Cooper’s mom?” Sidney blinks, the puzzle pieces slipping together as he puts two and two together. “I sometimes swing by Nicky’s practice when we’ve got some time off. Cooper’s hockey IQ is off the charts.”
“You…know Cooper?” You tilt your head, brows knitting together in confusion.
“Yeah, absolutely.” Sidney says, leaning a bit heavier into the wood counter, his posture relaxing now that the initial awkwardness of meeting a stranger is gone. “He’s a smart player, great vision. He doesn’t chase the puck like most kids his age. Watches where the play is going before anyone else even gets a sniff at making something happen. Him and Nicky make a great pairing, I was just talking to Geno about it last month.”
“Oh…wow.” You breathe, a soft laugh falling from your lips. “Please don’t tell him any of that. He already thinks he’s ready to be drafted in to the league and he’s only 10. If he finds out Sidney Crosby knows who he is, I’ll never get him to do his homework ever again.”
Sidney lets out a laugh, rich and warm that sends a shiver down your spine. As the sound fades, his eyes stay locked onto yours.
Up close, the soft afternoon light from the storefront window hits you perfectly, showing off the spray of freckles that dance across your nose and the genuine warmth of your smile. Sidney’s stomach does an unfamiliar swoop when you aim another one of those brilliant smiles at him.
He’d spent his entire adult life being cornered by women who put on an act for him, thinking they needed to be something specific in order to get his attention. Most women who approached him wanted something specific from him, from Sidney Crosby.
But you? You were standing here in a casual maxi skirt and cream colored sweater, smelling faintly of vanilla and salt water, completely unpretentious and entirely unassuming.
His gaze drops instinctively to your hands, which are still resting on the dark wood of the counter between you. His eyes narrow, searching. No diamonds. No gold band. Left hand complete bare.
Perfect.
A wave of relief washes over him, so sharp and cold his chest aches. Sidney clears his throat, a sudden flash of that endearing sheepishness returning as he shifts his weight, hazel eyes crinkling as he looks back up at you.
“Your secret is safe with me.” He murmurs softly. “But seriously, you’re doing a great job with him. It’s hard enough being a hockey parent, let alone…” He trails off, his eyes darting around the quiet shop, noting the way that you don’t seem to have any help in the store with you today.
“Let alone running a business by myself while being a hockey parent?" You fill in softly, the edge in your voice flaring with a history that sounded heavy.
“I was going to say let alone doing it all with a smile.” He corrects gently, the way his voice turns tender and patient makes the breath catch in your throat. He looks at you for just a beat longer than necessary, as if he’s trying to commit the color of your eyes to memory, before shaking his head. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to distract you, I don’t want to take up your whole afternoon. I can take the basket off your hands and let you get back to whatever you were doing before I stomped in here.”
“Right.” You breathe, the way your stomach felt a little funny when Sidney looked at you was something you were choosing to ignore. “The basket, of course. It’s in the back room. Do you want to come back or…?”
“Lead the way.” Sidney says, taking a step towards the back of the store, following in your wake.
The back room of your store was small, smelled heavily of cardboard, fresh ink and the chai tea you’d forgotten about on your desk. Boxes of inventory lined the walls, leaving a narrow path to your crowded desk in the corner of the room.
“I am so sorry about the mess.” You say over your shoulder, navigating the tight space. “I’m kind of constantly in a state of reorganization and things tend to get a big chaotic back here.”
Sidney waves you off, “Don’t worry about it. My closet after a ten day road trip is twice as messy, you’re fine.” He jokes, following you back towards your desk.
Because the room was so tight, his massive frame seemed to swallow up any extra space. You could feel the heat radiating off of him as he stepped up to your desk where the large wicker basket sat. It was packed full with some of your best sellers, a cozy blanket Cooper had picked out, and some of your other favorite gifts you sold at the store.
“Wow.” Sidney says, looking over at you with an impressed look. He reaches out, his index finger tapping at the edge of a hardcover book. “This is bigger than what I was expecting. The foundation is going to love it.”
“Anna said it was for a good cause.” You shrug, picking up a thick spool of sunny yellow ribbon.
Being so close to someone as imposing as Sidney was making you nervous. As you tried to measure out a length to tie the final bow on the basket, the plastic spool slips from your fingers, clattering against a stack of books and rolling underneath your desk.
“Oh for the love…” You mutter, leaning down to reach for it.
“I got it.” Sidney replies instantly.
Before you can protest, he drops down onto one knee, his broad shoulders shifting beneath his slouchy hoodie as he reaches a long arm deep under the desk. His proximity to you is dizzying; he was so close you could see the faint line of a faded scar at the edge of his jaw that you assumed had been a result of his occupation.
Sidney straightens a moment later, holding the spool of ribbon out to you. His gaze locks onto yours, his body still unnervingly close to yours in such a small space.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.” You breathe, taking the ribbon from his hand.
For a split second, your fingers brush against his and a jolt of electricity skittering straight up your arm. You quickly turn away, suddenly very interested in making sure you get the perfect length of ribbon to make a large enough bow.
It takes every ounce of strength in you to calm your soaring pulse.
Sidney stays close, watching your hands work to tie the ribbon into a large bow. “You know, I usually just sign jerseys for these things. I’m impressed by the amount of effort you’ve put into this. It’s going to look amazing on display at the gala.”
A tiny smile tugs at the corner of your mouth, pride in what you’ve built blooming in your chest.
“Well, if it’s going to a silent auction to benefit a charity, it needs to look like something someone might actually want to take home.” You say, pulling the knot tight and fluffing out the loops before giving it a final pat. “There. All don. Think you can handle carrying it?”
Sidney lets out an amused chuckle, effortlessly slipping his hands through the basket’s handle and lifting it as if it weighed nothing.
“I think I can manage.”
Leading him back out into the bright afternoon light, you walk him all the way to the front door. He shifts the basket from one arm to the other, reaching out with his free hand to pull the door open. The brass bell above you chimes loudly. He stops on the threshold, turning back to look at you one last time. A gust of the cool autumn breeze catches the edges of his hair that is sticking out from under the brim of his hat.
“It was really nice to meet you.” Sidney says, his voice quiet and calm as he holds eye contact with you. “Thanks for the basket too, it’s going to make a huge difference at the auction.”
“I’m glad I could help.” You smile softly, your hands slipping into the pockets of your skirt. “It was nice to meet you too, good luck with the season.”
Sidney gives you one more lingering look, the kind of look that makes you feel entirely exposed and seen in a way you’re not used to experiencing. With a smile, he turns and walks out the door and down the brick sidewalk towards his car parked at the end of the street, the basket pinned between his body and one large arm.
You stand by the door for a moment, watching his broad shoulders walk away into the distance. Your fingers were still tingling from where they had brushed against his in the backroom of your store. When you finally walk back behind the cash wrap, your quiet bookstore suddenly felt a lot emptier than it had just twenty minutes earlier.
tag list: @wonderfullyhiddensaga @destinyg237 @kitnootkat @dandelionwrites8 @louisianalady @buckybluebarnes @sticks-n-pucks @nox410 @whosmev @raynetargaryan2 @cutie-snoopy @sticks-n-pucks
figure skater x macklin celebrini au in timeline order ★ ☆
→ blaire stevenson x macklin celebrini
or best friends to lovers to strangers to lovers again
the blaire + mack au fics in order of when i think they would happen! may be some slight inaccuracies based on when i wrote what but enjoy!! :P
regular masterlist | au timeline + background | mood board
UPDATED: 07/05/26
pre-san jose
watch the world from the sidelines
scu year 2 + sjs rookie season (fall 2024-spring 2025)
seeing each other again | part 2
the bracelet
mack evades the questions
a day at the beach
telling will
samy knowing blaire
blaire at her first sharks game
will meets blaire
the black dog
hard launch or relaunch?
celebrini 71
mack gets chirped at
samy meets blaire
samy being a big sister to blaire | samy being a big sister part 2
first overnight
will being a big brother to blaire | will being a big brother part 2
new year’s in san jose
the hickey
valentine’s day fun
summer 2025
birthday fun
blaire’s 19th!
a perfect birthday
camp aim high
back home
scu year 3 + sjs year 2 (fall 2025-spring 2026)
sneaking into practice
interview interruption
tricks at family skate
road to milan with "canadian royalty"
canadian royalty
thoughts running wild
painful endings
loving on you
summer 2026
a macklin celebrini summer
mack's 20th!
blaire's 20th bday post!
After The Love Is Gone - Lando Norris x Reader
summary: it was supposed to be simple: you had a fiancé, a job in the paddock, and a life that made sense if nobody looked at it too closely. then lando norris came along and made things even more complicated
content: slow burn, best friends to lovers, f1 journalist!reader, mutual pining, oscar as unwilling witness, burnt out stale relationship
AN: hi guys! haven't been on here in a while! hope you are all good!! loads of kisses x
There were places in the world where one was expected to behave with dignity.
Libraries, for example. Churches. Courtrooms. The quiet, perfume-polished lobby of a five-star hotel where men in linen jackets pretended not to stare at women in sunglasses.
The McLaren garage, by contrast, had never once managed dignity for longer than three consecutive minutes.
It was not entirely the garage’s fault. It was difficult, you supposed, to preserve a sense of solemn professionalism when the place was full of men who handled million-pound machinery with religious reverence, then turned around and argued for twenty minutes about whether a banana counted as a sufficient lunch. There were engineers hunched over screens with the intensity of wartime codebreakers, mechanics moving with practiced precision around carbon fibre and tyres, and somewhere, always somewhere, Lando Norris causing trouble with the self-satisfaction of a man who considered mischief to be his civic duty.
You found him almost immediately.
Not because you were looking for him.
You were not looking for him.
Technically, you had come into the garage with your microphone bag over one shoulder, your press pass warm against your chest, and the perfectly reasonable intention of finding your fiancé before the day grew too loud and too fast.
Clive worked on Oscar’s side of the McLaren garage as one of his tyre technicians, which had once felt like a lovely coincidence and now felt more like one of those practical arrangements life made on your behalf before asking whether you still wanted it. He had been your childhood sweetheart, though neither of you used that phrase because it made the whole thing sound more picturesque than it felt now. He was the boy from home. The one who had known your parents, your old bedroom, your first terrible haircut, the version of you who had not yet learned to walk through a paddock with a microphone in one hand and three follow-up questions already forming in her head.
You had loved him in the earnest, uncomplicated way young people love before they understand that love requires tending. There had been years when being with Clive felt as natural as knowing the way back to your own house. Then time had done what time sometimes does. It had simply worn the shine off, little by little, until the thing remained but no longer quite glowed.
The engagement had happened four years ago, in the natural way of things that have gone on so long everyone assumes they must continue. There had been a ring, and your families had cried, and Clive had looked relieved, almost proud, as though he had reached a checkpoint. Since then, no date had been chosen. No venue visited. No serious conversation survived long before being folded away under work, travel, exhaustion, timing, money, next season, next month, someday.
Someday had become a room you both kept passing without entering.
Still, you came to the McLaren garage often. At first because Clive was there, and because your job as an F1 journalist meant your paths crossed naturally enough for people to joke that you had become a semi-permanent fixture beside the papaya walls.
Then, somewhere along the way, you had stopped feeling like someone’s fiancée visiting his workplace and started feeling like you belonged there in your own peculiar, unofficial way.
The mechanics nodded when you passed. Someone usually had a coffee for you if you arrived early enough. Oscar gave you one of his dry little greetings if he was feeling generous.
And Lando.
It had happened without ceremony. The first time you properly spoke to him, he had made some ridiculous comment under his breath about you looking far too intelligent to willingly spend time with McLaren, and you had answered before you could think better of it. He had laughed, surprised and pleased, and from then on the two of you had fallen into a rhythm as easily as if someone had left a door open.
It was like things just clicked. It was friendship. Fast friendship, perhaps, but the paddock had a way of speeding ordinary things along. Everyone lived too closely, travelled too often, worked too late. You learned people in fragments: how they took their coffee, what annoyed them, when they were pretending to be fine, what sort of joke would pull them out of a bad mood.
With Lando, the jokes came first.
He pulled pranks on Oscar and looked to see whether you had noticed. You pretended to disapprove and then laughed anyway. He sent you terrible memes between media sessions. You corrected his spelling with unnecessary severity. He started saving the more ridiculous garage stories for you because, according to him, you had ‘the best horrified face.’ You told him he had the attention span of an over-caffeinated todler. He told you that was rich coming from a woman who once lost her phone while it was still in her own hand.
It was easy.
That was all.
You were loyal. You knew where the lines were. You did not cross them. You loved Clive, or at least you loved the life you had built around loving him, and you had never been the sort of woman who went looking for trouble just because someone else made her laugh.
But if anyone had asked why the McLaren garage had begun to feel brighter whenever Lando saw you first, you would not have had a sensible answer.
You were used to it by now. The nods from the mechanics. The occasional coffees passed your way. Oscar’s eyebrows raising as a form of greeting if he was feeling generous. Lando’s grin if he saw you first.
Today, he saw you first.
He was standing beside Oscar’s corner of the garage with an expression far too smug to not be suspicious. His curls were slightly messy, one hand tucked into the pocket of his shorts, the other holding what appeared to be a neatly stapled stack of papers. Oscar stood in front of him, arms folded, face blank in the particular way that meant he was either deeply unimpressed or spiritually departing his own body.
“Morning,” you said, slowing down.
Lando turned to you with a look of immediate delight.
It was always a little unfair, that look, the twinkle lighting up his green eyes. Like you had arrived exactly when he had hoped you would.
“Morning,” he said brightly. “Or should I say zǎo shàng hǎo, actually.”
Oscar closed his eyes. “No.”
You glanced between them. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Lando said.
“That’s usually how I know something terrible happened.”
Oscar held up the papers in his hand.
At first, you did not understand. They looked like normal race notes: printed tables, tyre information, track analysis, little diagrams that made your brain feel as if it had stepped into a room where everyone spoke fluent engineering and you had arrived carrying a tambourine.
Then Oscar turned the top page toward you.
It was entirely in Chinese.
You blinked.
Lando pressed his lips together.
You tried not to laugh. It was a noble effort, brief and doomed.
“Oh my God,” you said, covering your mouth. “Lando.”
“It’s educational,” he said quickly. “Global sport. International mindset. Oscar’s always talking about self improvement.”
“I have never once said that in my life,” Oscar said.
“You implied it.”
“When?”
“Details.”
Oscar looked at you. “See what I deal with?”
You should have been sympathetic. You did try. Oscar had the faintly haunted look of a man who had woken up expecting a normal day and instead been handed his professional instructions in a language he did not speak. There was something tragic about his composure, something almost Victorian in the way he endured suffering without theatrics.
Unfortunately, Lando was looking at you.
And that ruined everything.
He was not watching Oscar anymore. Not really. He was watching the corner of your mouth, waiting for it to betray you. His eyes were too bright, too alive with that private triumph he always wore when he had managed to make you laugh before the day had properly begun.
You bit down on your smile.
His grin widened.
“No,” you said, pointing at him. “Don’t look at me like that. This is workplace bullying.”
“It’s team bonding.”
“It’s trauma bonding.”
“It’s love.”
Oscar lowered the papers. “It’s awful.”
“Mind your tone, Osc,” Lando said. “Mandarin is a beautiful language, you’re being disrespectful now.”
You laughed then, properly, despite yourself. The sound slipped out of you before you could dress it up as professionalism, and Lando’s face changed in that small, dangerous way it sometimes did. Barely anything. A softening, perhaps. A little warmth gathering behind his eyes before he caught himself and turned back to Oscar with renewed theatrical seriousness.
“Right,” he said. “Shall we go through page one?”
Oscar stared at him. “Can you read it?”
“No.”
“Then why would we go through it?”
You leaned against the partition, shaking your head. “Give it a shot Oscar, you’ll be fluent by Shanghai next year.”
“See,” Lando said, tilting his head, “she always gets it.”
There were sentences that should not have been allowed to mean anything.
That was one of them.
Because he said it lightly, of course. Carelessly. In the same tone he used for everything ridiculous and harmless. But his eyes stayed on yours for half a second too long, and suddenly the garage felt slightly warmer than it had a moment ago. Around you, people moved and called to each other; someone laughed near the back; a wheel gun sounded briefly from somewhere nearby. The whole world continued in its noisy, mechanical rush.
You looked away first.
“Have you guys seen Clive by the way?” you said, too quickly.
Lando’s expression did not fall. That would have been too obvious. He merely looked down at the papers in Oscar’s hand and nodded once, as if remembering a fact he disliked but had agreed not to argue with.
“Right,” he said. “Clive.”
Oscar, who noticed more than anyone gave him credit for, became suddenly fascinated by page two of his translated notes.
As if summoned by the sound of his name, Clive appeared from the far side of the garage with a half-empty coffee in his hand and his headset pushed around his neck. He was good-looking in a sensible sort of way, with a square jaw, broad shoulders, and the kind of face your relatives liked because it suggested reliability. He had once been very charming to your mother. This fact had done an unreasonable amount of damage to your life.
“There you are,” Clive said, though he did not sound as if he had been looking very hard. His gaze passed over you, then Lando, then Oscar’s papers. “What’s all this?”
“Lando translated Oscar’s race notes to Chinese,” you said, still smiling.
Clive gave the papers a brief look, then snorted without much interest. “Must be nice having that much free time.”
That was the trouble with Clive. He rarely said things that were bad enough to defend yourself against. They were only small. Dull little stones dropped into the middle of a conversation until the whole thing sank.
Your smile thinned.
Lando’s did too, but the change was so quick that it was nearly unnoticable.
Then he smiled.
“Yeah,” he said lightly. “Terrible habit, having fun. I keep meaning to become joyless, but Oscar’s already taken the position.”
Oscar did not look up. “I’m not joyless. I’m tired of you.”
“Sure you are, buddy.”
You gave Lando a look. “You are aware this is his workplace?”
“It’s my workplace too.”
“And this is how you contribute?”
“I bring atmosphere.”
Oscar held up the papers. “I’m trying to find a single word I understand.”
Lando leaned closer, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret. “That’s how I feel in strategy meetings.”
You laughed again, softer this time, grateful in a way you did not want to examine. Lando did that often: caught the edge of something awkward before it cut too deeply, then turned it into a joke and handed the room back to you lighter than he found it.
Clive did not notice.
He took a sip of coffee and looked at you. “You coming? I need to grab something from the back before briefing.”
It was not quite an invitation. More an assumption.
You straightened. “Yeah. Sure.”
Lando’s eyes flicked to you.
For a brief, foolish second, you wished he would say something. Not something meaningful. God, no. Nothing that dangerous. Just one more joke, one more excuse to keep you there, one more absurd comment about Oscar’s tragic academic journey.
But he only gave a small smile.
“See you later, trouble.”
“You’re the trouble,” you said.
“Debatable.”
“It’s really not.”
You were still laughing when Clive began walking away, and because you were engaged, because you had been engaged for four years, because everyone knew it and nobody said anything, you followed him.
The ring on your finger caught the garage lights as you adjusted the strap of your bag.
You used to look at it often after Clive proposed. Not obsessively, but with a kind of shy, startled pride. It had once seemed like proof of something: that your life was moving forward, that love had a shape, that someday had been promised to you in metal and stone.
Now you mostly noticed it when it felt heavy.
Lando watched you go.
He kept smiling until you disappeared behind the partition with Clive’s hand resting absently between your shoulder blades, guiding you forward without ever quite holding you.
Only when you were gone did his expression change.
Not dramatically. Lando was too practiced for that, too quick with humour, too used to folding softness into jokes before anyone could see it.
But Oscar saw.
He always saw.
He looked from the empty space where you had been back to Lando, then down at the translated notes in his hand.
“You know,” Oscar said, “for someone with so much free time, you’re making your own life very complicated.”
Lando took the papers from him and tapped them neatly against the counter.
“Don’t know what you mean, mate.”
Oscar stared.
Lando avoided his eyes.
…
There was something rather peculiar about the media pen after a race.
You had always thought it faintly theatrical. The bright lights, the microphones, the tired men in race suits trying to sound philosophical about tyre degradation, the journalists nodding gravely as if the fate of nations depended on sector two. You loved it, though. You loved the little absurdity of it, the speed of it, the fact that everyone was half-performing and half-telling the truth.
You were still checking your notes when Lando appeared in front of you, still flushed from the race, curls damp at his forehead, eyes bright with that dangerous kind of mischief that usually meant he had decided to make your job more difficult or more pleasant.
Possibly both.
“Right,” he said, before you had even introduced the segment. “Be nice.”
You glanced up. “I’m always nice.”
“Only when I tell you what you wanna hear.”
“Better make sure to give me some good answers then.”
His smile pulled to one side, bright and troublesome, like he had found the loose thread in your composure and meant to tug. “Maybe ask better questions then.”
The cameraman shifted behind the lens. Your producer gave you the silent signal.
You lifted the microphone, rearranged your expression into something professional, and began.
“Lando, strong recovery drive today, especially after the opening stint. How are you feeling after that?”
He answered properly at first, because beneath all the nonsense there was a serious driver with serious instincts, and you liked that about him more than you should. He spoke about balance, traffic, tyre wear, the grip coming in later than expected. You nodded, listening, asking him about the strategy window and whether the car had felt better in clean air.
Then, because restraint was not one of his more developed virtues, he glanced at your notes.
“What’s next?” he asked. “Are you about to ask about my deeply controversial race weekend food regime?”
You blinked. “That was not on my list.”
“Looked like it was.”
“I wrote ‘race weekend fuel management.”
“It definetly said food.”
“You read what you want to read I suppose.”
“Arye you calling me fat?” ,” he said, with the grave disappointment of a man betrayed by the press. “And here I was thinking you respected me.”
“Respect is a big word, Lan.”
His eyes narrowed, twinkling. “Careful.”
Behind you, your cameraman made the fatal mistake of laughing under his breath.
Lando pointed toward the lens. “Let it be known to the world she thinks my butt is getting too big.”
You should have stopped there. A better journalist would have. A wiser woman, perhaps. Someone less susceptible to boys with bright eyes and terrible timing.
Instead, you said, “Nothing wrong with improving the rear-end performance.”
He leaned slightly closer to the microphone, his expression lowering into that half-cocky, half-amused look that made him unbearable. “Is that so?”
There it was. That little phrase. That little shift. As if the whole interview had tilted away from professionalism and toward something with a pulse.
You felt the smile trying to break over your face and fought it with all the dignity you had left.
Unfortunately, dignity had never done well around Lando Norris.
“I’m simply reporting what I’ve observed,” you said.
“Oh, so you’re watching me now?”
The words were light. His voice was playful. But his eyes stayed on yours just long enough for the noise of the media pen to draw back around you like a tide.
You opened your mouth, then shut it again.
Lando smiled.
Not triumphantly. Worse. Softly.
You forced yourself back to the job.
“Final question,” you said, trying to sound severe. “Looking ahead, what’s the main thing to improve before Barcelona?”
“Media training,” he said.
“For you?”
“For both of us, apparently.”
You gave him a look.
“Oh, and the car.” He nodded, pretending to remember the existence of Formula One. “Yes. That. Probably qualifying pace, bit more consistency through the slower corners. But mostly answer discipline.”
You shook your head, smiling despite yourself. “Thank you, Lando.”
“Always a pleasure.”
He stepped away, but not before giving you one last look, quick and familiar and bright enough to make your heart behave foolishly.
You pretended to check your notes.
The next driver was already approaching.
George Russell stepped into place next, looking far too amused for a man who had only just arrived. He glanced after Lando, then at you, his mouth already curving.
“Well,” he said, before you had asked a single thing, “I’ll try not to disappoint after whatever that was.”
Heat rose to your cheeks with such speed that you resented him immediately.
You adjusted your notes. “George, please.”
“What? I’m being supportive.”
“You’re being crazy.”
“No, no. Crazy would be discussing on live TV whether chicken nuggets is now part of McLaren’s official performance programme.”
You gave him a look.
He smiled, perfectly composed. “Right. Sorry. Racing. Lovely sport. Cars go quickly.”
You lifted the microphone again, grateful for the structure of your work, for lap times and sector splits and the lovely impersonal safety of performance analysis. George answered cleanly, charmingly, with just enough humour to keep you on your toes.
But your attention was not as obedient as it should have been.
Because beyond George’s shoulder, Lando had stopped.
He must have heard the comment. Perhaps he had only caught his own name, or perhaps George’s voice had carried clearly enough through the pen. Either way, he looked back.
For a moment, the playful mask had gone.
He was not smiling now. Not quite. He was looking at you as you laughed at something George said, and the expression on his face was so unguarded that it felt almost indecent to see it. There was fondness there, yes, but also an ache he had no business wearing in public.
As though there was no one else in that crowded, noisy, overheated paddock he would rather look at.
Then Carlos Sainz appeared beside him, calm as ever, handsome in that composed, older-brother way that made even sympathy look stylish. He followed Lando’s gaze, understood everything in approximately half a second, and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
Lando startled slightly.
Carlos did not smile too much. He was kinder than that.
“Ay, cabrón,” he said softly. “Sometimes life gives you a beautiful problem, no?”
Lando looked away at once. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not.”
“She’s just—”
Carlos waited.
Lando stopped.
Across the pen, you asked George another question, smiling politely, microphone steady in your hand, utterly unaware of the quiet little tragedy occurring ten metres away.
Carlos squeezed Lando’s shoulder once.
Lando tried to laugh. It did not quite work.
“Plenty of fish in the sea, yeah?” he said, attempting lightness and failing so badly that even Carlos looked pained on his behalf.
Carlos tilted his head. “I thought you didn’t like fish.”
Lando had no clever answer for that.
So he looked back at you instead.
…
Barcelona had softened into evening, turning gold at the edges as if someone had held it briefly to a flame. The streets outside the restaurant were warm and crowded, filled with the lazy music of cutlery, passing scooters, laughter thrown from one table to another. Inside, the private room McLaren had taken over was already loud enough to suggest that no one present had ever been shy in their life, and if they had, the Formula One circus had beaten the habit out of them.
Terracotta dishes appeared and disappeared as if by magic: pan con tomate glossed with olive oil, patatas bravas in a deep red sauce, little croquetas with crisp golden shells, prawns bright with garlic, bowls of olives no one remembered ordering and everyone kept eating. There were glasses of wine and bottles of sparkling water and men in team polos telling stories with the slightly feral relief of people who had been released from the paddock for two hours and intended to make poor use of the freedom.
You arrived with Clive.
Or rather, you arrived beside Clive, which was not always the same thing.
He was in a good mood, at least by his standards, one hand resting briefly at the small of your back as you stepped into the restaurant, the other already raised toward someone from the garage.
“There’s everyone,” he said, and then he was gone into the easy noise of men who knew one another from long hours, quick repairs, bad flights, and shared cigarettes outside loading bays.
You knew most of them now. Knew the names of the mechanics who always asked if your interviews had gone well, knew which engineers became unexpectedly funny after half a glass of wine. Being Clive’s fiancée had opened the first door into the world of McLaren, but you had stayed because you liked the people.
And, though you did not care to admit it even to yourself, you liked how often the McLaren garage meant Lando.
He arrived late with Carlos.
Of course he did.
Carlos, Lando’s usual plus one, entered first, elegant with the air of a man who had never once rushed in his life and yet somehow was never truly late. Lando came beside him, talking already, hands moving as if the story required illustration. His curls were still slightly damp from a shower, his shirt half tucked in the lazy way of a man who never really cared enough, and when he looked up and saw you, his face changed.
Not greatly. Nothing one could accuse him of.
But enough.
A quick brightening. A private spark. A smile that seemed to find you before it found the rest of the room.
You looked down at your glass.
“There they are,” Clive said, returning heavily to the seat beside you. “The celebrities.”
Lando heard it as he reached the table.
“Careful,” he said. “Carlos gets very sensitive when people reduce him to his beauty.”
Carlos pulled out his chair with magnificent calm. “It is a burden, but I manage.”
“You’re so brave,” you said.
Lando placed a hand over his heart. “And me?”
“You clearly have nothing to worry about.”
Carlos laughed. Lando looked wounded, though the effect was somewhat ruined by how pleased he was to see you smile.
The seating had happened in that careless way group dinners often did, though it felt less like chance when Lando ended up across from you, Oscar on his left, Carlos on his right. Clive sat beside you, but he leaned away almost immediately, drawn into a conversation with two mechanics about some flight delay in Montreal and whether one of them had insulted an airline employee in a way that could technically be described as “provoked.”
You should have listened. You tried for nearly four minutes.
Unfortunately, across the table, Lando was trying to steal one of Oscar’s croquetas with the careful concentration of a man defusing a bomb.
Oscar did not look at him. “I can see you, Lando.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Your hand is on my plate.”
“Could be anyone’s.”
“It has your watch on it.”
Lando paused, looked at his wrist, then at you.
You laughed into your glass, and Lando looked up immediately, triumphant in the softest, stupidest way. It was the sort of look that should have meant nothing and therefore meant far too much.
Clive’s elbow brushed yours as he reached for bread.
“What’s funny?” he asked, without really looking at you.
“Lando’s trying to steal Oscar’s food.”
Clive glanced across the table, gave a short snort, then turned back to his conversation. “He’s always doing something.”
Lando’s eyes flicked toward Clive.
Then back to you.
Then he lifted the stolen croqueta in a silent toast and ate it whole.
Oscar stared at the empty space on his plate. “I hope you choke.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do, actually.”
“You’d miss me.”
“Sure I’d do.”
You had to look away, smiling.
Dinner warmed around you. Plates passed, glasses were refilled, someone began telling a story about Zak accidentally ending up in the wrong meeting room and committing to the bit for ten minutes before admitting it. Carlos spoke easily with the people around him, Oscar contributed only when necessary and usually to ruin Lando’s version of events with what he deemed to be ‘irrelevant’ details.
For a little while, you were happy.
Not wildly, not foolishly. Just quietly lit from within, the way one sometimes became at a table where the food was good, the city outside was beautiful, and someone across from you kept looking as though your laugh had improved his evening.
Then Clive spoke loudly enough to make several heads turn.
“So,” he said to Lando, leaning back in his chair with the satisfied confidence of a man about to be unpleasant and call it banter. “You brought Carlos tonight instead of some chick, then?”
The table shifted, not much but enough. A fork paused. Oscar looked down at his plate. Carlos lifted his eyebrows very slightly.
Lando smiled, but there was less ease in it now.
“I mean Carlos is the ultimate babe, isn’t he?” he said.
Carlos nodded. “This is true.”
Clive laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Heard you were spotted with a model last week though. How’s that going though?”
You felt something in your stomach sink a little bit without knowing exactly why.
“Wouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Lando said lightly.
“Come on, mate.” Clive grinned, warming to his own coarseness. “Must be nice though. Models lining up and all that. I’d be hitting all of them if I were you.”
You set down your glass.
No one had insulted you directly. That was the old defence, the one men like Clive relied upon without ever needing to name it. It was only a joke. It was just lads talking. It wasn’t about you. Except it was, in the way such things were always about every woman present, quietly reducing the world to something to rank, take, brag over, consume.
You smiled because you had been taught too well.
“I’m going to get another drink,” you said.
Clive barely glanced at you. “Oh babe can you bring me another one too?”
“I’ll see what they have.”
You stood anyway.
Lando looked at you then.
Only briefly, but you saw it: the irritation carefully tucked behind his eyes, the instinct to say something, the better instinct not to make a scene you would have to stand inside. He stayed seated as you walked away, and for that you were grateful.
For about thirty seconds.
Then he appeared beside you at the bar.
Not too quickly. Not obvious. He leaned one elbow against the counter as if he had wandered there by accident, though Lando Norris had never wandered anywhere in his life without purpose.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he said.
You gave him a look. “At the bar?”
“Mad coincidence.”
“At the restaurant we’re both having dinner in?”
“Honestly, what are the odds?”
The bartender placed a glass of sparkling water in front of you. You picked it up, grateful to have something to do with your hands.
For a moment, neither of you said anything.
Behind you, the table was noisy again, but the sound seemed distant now, softened by the warm light over the bar. Lando looked down, dragging one finger through a ring of condensation on the counter.
Then he said, very casually, “For the record, only thing I’d like to be hitting right now is him in the face, to be fair.”
You nearly choked on your water.
“Lando.”
“What?” His eyes widened with perfect innocence. “I said to be fair. That makes it balanced.”
“You cannot say that.”
“I can’t do it,” he said. “Saying it seems like the compromise.”
“You’re the worst.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t think it too.”
You laughed then, unwillingly and all at once, the kind of laugh that escaped before you could make it polite. Lando’s face softened before he turned it back into a grin.
“There she is,” he said.
It was too gentle.
Your laughter faded into something smaller.
He seemed to realise it at the same time you did, because he looked away first, clearing his throat with great interest in the bar snacks.
“Anyway,” he said, briskly recovering, “this whole model thing is very misunderstood.”
“Oh?”
“Terribly lonely life. Every day a new glamorous woman. Flashing cameras. Private jets. No one understanding the real me.”
“The real you being?”
“A sensitive soul with a complicated relationship with Oscar’s approval.”
Across the room, as if sensing his name had been used for nonsense, Oscar looked over.
Lando pointed at him. “See? He feels it.”
Oscar frowned.
You laughed again.
This time, Lando did not bother hiding how pleased he was.
“Also,” he added, leaning a little closer, “I don’t know why Clive thinks Carlos isn’t a proper date. Look at him. Man’s gorgeous.”
You glanced over at Carlos, who was listening to a mechanic with grave attention, one hand under his chin like a prince receiving news of war.
“He is gorgeous,” you admitted.
Lando’s eyes came back to you, bright and offended. “Wow.”
“What?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“You brought him up.”
“I didn’t ask you to agree that quickly.”
You smiled into your glass. “Jealous?”
He held your gaze for one beat too long.
Then his mouth tilted.
“What if I am?”
The words were playful, nothing more than another easy toss of the ball between you, and still your pulse tripped stupidly over itself.
…
You liked the paddock the best in the morning, before the real chaos settled in.
There was still a little softness in the air then. The sun had not yet made the tarmac shimmer. The hospitality doors were open, spilling out the smell of espresso and warm pastries, and everyone walked as though the day might still be reasonable if treated kindly enough.
You were walking toward the pit lane with Lando, which rather ruined the possibility of reason.
He had fallen into step beside you outside the McLaren motorhome, claiming he was going the same way. This was possibly true. It was also possibly the sort of truth men used when they did not want to admit they had waited seven minutes by a door while pretending to be busy on their phone.
You did not accuse him of this.
One had to preserve some illusions.
“So,” he said, lowering his voice with the seriousness of a man about to discuss international diplomacy. “I need your opinion.”
“Dangerous start.”
“It’s important.”
“You’re making me worried.”
He glanced over his shoulder, then leaned slightly closer, as if the papaya walls themselves might report him. “Oscar’s diffuser.”
You slowed half a step. “His diffuser?”
“Yeah.”
“Oscar has a diffuser?”
“He says it keeps him calm.”
“I’m sure he needs whatever peace he can find with a teammate like you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lando said.
You looked at him. “But okay, so he’s using it to stay calm?”
“No one his age should be that composed. It’s unnatural. He’s a baby still but has the energy of a retired accountant who owns a very good chair.”
You tried not to laugh. You failed privately first, which was the most dangerous stage because Lando always noticed.
His eyes flashed with triumph.
“Exactly,” he said. “You see it.”
“I see that you are about to become a workplace hazard again.”
“I’m just doing what needs to be done.”
“I bet Oscar is thrilled he extended his contract.”
He grinned. “He wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t secretly love what we have.”
Around you, the paddock continued its steady morning ballet. A group of Alpine mechanics passed with crates, someone from Haas nodded at you, two photographers were already crouched in search of the perfect shot of a man walking while looking tired. Lando moved easily through it all, cap backwards, one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing as he spoke. He had that extraordinary gift of seeming casual in a world that wanted everyone to be tense.
It made people look at him.
It made you look at him too, though you were generally careful about that.
“So what are you planning with Oscar’s diffuser?” you asked.
Lando’s face lit up.
“No,” you said immediately.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“I know your face.”
“My face is innocent.”
You just gave him a concerned look.
He smiled, far too pleased with that. “Australian spray tan.”
You stopped walking.
Lando took two more steps, then turned back, pretending to be surprised you had not followed. “What?”
“No.”
“It would be subtle.”
“It’s fake tan in a diffuser.”
He looked at you for a second, then nodded gravely. “So… it needs a little refinement perhaps.”
A slight giggle escaped your mouth.
Lando came back toward you, walking backwards now. “Imagine, though. He finishes debrief, completely unaware, just slightly more sun-kissed than when he started.”
“He would murder you.”
“He’d have to catch me first.”
“He drives a Formula One car.”
“Who has the number 1 on his car?”
You gave him a look.
He gave you one back, the little cocky one, all mouth and eyes and mischief, and the terrible thing was that you did imagine it. Oscar sitting calmly beside his diffuser, gradually acquiring the complexion of a man who had spent six weeks in Byron Bay. Lando pretending to know nothing. The entire garage slowly realising something was wrong.
You pressed your lips together.
Lando saw.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “That’s a laugh.”
“It is not.”
“That is absolutely a laugh. I see those cute dimples.”
“You really need to find a hobby, Lan.”
He put a hand to his chest. “This is my hobby.”
“A real one.”
“This is real to me.”
“Like golf,” you said. “Or chess.”
He pulled a face. “I’m too good at that already, it’s gotten boring.”
“Or,” you continued before you could think better of it, “a girlfriend.”
The word arrived lightly.
It should have stayed that way.
It was only a joke, tossed into the bright morning between espresso cups and camera shutters, the sort of thing you had said a hundred times in different forms. Get a life, Norris. Find a hobby. Bother someone else. Poor Oscar. Some harmless little thread in the fabric of your friendship.
But this time, for whatever reason, it caught.
Lando stopped smiling first.
Only the smallest shift, like a cloud moving across the sun. His gaze stayed on yours, and all the noise of the paddock seemed, unhelpfully, to place itself somewhere far away.
“A girlfriend,” he repeated.
You swallowed.
There were many sensible things you might have said. Yes, a girlfriend, preferably one with a high tolerance for nonsense. Or, God help her, whoever she may be. Or even something ordinary about Oscar filing a complaint with HR. Anything would have done.
Instead you stood there with your press pass against your chest and your heart behaving as if it had forgotten there were rules.
Lando’s eyes moved briefly over your face, not boldly, not greedily, but with an attention that felt far more dangerous because it was careful. He looked as though he might say something honest if the morning gave him half a chance.
You looked away.
It was not cowardice, you told yourself. It was decency. There was a difference, although lately the two had begun to resemble each other in poor lighting.
Lando breathed out, and when he spoke again, his voice had recovered its usual shape, though it sat a little softer around the edges.
“Bit harsh,” he said. “Imagine subjecting some poor girl to me full time.”
You forced a smile. “Exactly. There are limits to what one woman can reasonably be expected to endure.”
“You care about the people.”
“I’m a journalist. It’s my burden.”
“A noble profession.”
“Someone has to ask the difficult questions.”
“Like whether Oscar’s new skincolor is to rep the papaya brand even more?”
“If this prank happens, I’m reporting you myself.”
He started walking again, slower this time, and you fell into step beside him. The bubble had not burst exactly. It had changed. Thinner, perhaps. Easier to see through.
“You’d never expose your source,” he said.
“You’re not my source, Lan. You’re the suspect.”
He smiled, but it was not the same smile from before. “I’d look good in a mugshot, I reckon.”
“Sure you would.”
Ahead, the pit lane opened bright and busy, lined with people who had no idea that one careless word had made the morning feel different. You could see the McLaren garage now, mechanics already moving around the front, screens alive, the day beginning to tighten into schedule and performance and obligation.
Lando slowed near the entrance.
For one foolish second, you thought he might say something. Something small, maybe. Something not quite honest but close enough to be dangerous. His shoulder brushed yours as someone passed behind him, and he did not move away immediately.
Then Oscar appeared in the garage doorway with a suspicious look on his face.
“Why are you both smiling?” he asked.
You straightened. “We’re not.”
Oscar looked from him to you, then back again. “I don’t like when you two arrive together. Something always happens to me.”
“You’re paranoid,” Lando said.
“No, that’s pattern recognition.”
You laughed despite yourself, and Lando looked at you then, with that open, foolish warmth people only wore when they truly let their guard down.
Oscar saw that too.
Of course he did.
Oscar sighed with the patient misery of a man who had been placed among fools and given no immediate means of escape. “I’m locking my dressingroom today.”
“Smart,” you said.
Lando leaned closer to you, lowering his voice. “Cowardice, really.”
“You think Zac has a spare key?”
“I like the way you think.”
Oscar pointed at both of you. “Separate. Immediately.”
You lifted your hands. “I’m innocent.”
“You’re never innocent when he’s involved,” Oscar said.
Lando made an offended little noise, you rolled your eyes, Oscar disappeared back into the garage muttering something about changing his lock.
…
There are few things more dangerous than a bored Lando Norris with access to a printer.
Oscar had learned this the hard way, as most people learned the truths that mattered. He had survived the translated race notes with the pale endurance of a man who knew that protest would only feed the beast. Since then, he had begun treating the garage like a crime scene: checking his water bottle before drinking from it, eyeing his chair before sitting down, regarding all stationery with the suspicion of a Victorian widow receiving anonymous letters.
Still, somehow, Lando found a way.
You arrived in the McLaren garage late in the afternoon, when the day had begun to feel a little frayed at the edges. Screens glowed in the papaya-lit dimness. Mechanics moved with tired precision. Someone laughed near the back, someone else swore softly at a cable, and the whole place smelled faintly of coffee, rubber, and the metallic warmth of machines that had been worked too hard.
Clive was somewhere in the garage. You had seen him earlier for perhaps fifteen seconds, during which he had looked up from his phone, asked, “Busy day?” and returned to whatever he was reading before your answer had fully formed.
It was nothing new.
That was almost the sadder thing.
Then you saw Oscar.
He was standing perfectly still beside his side of the garage, which, with Oscar, was less a posture and more a warning system.
Lando stood nearby looking serene.
Too serene.
Every visible object near Oscar had Lando’s face on it.
Tiny stickers. Little smug Lando faces, all giving thumbs-up, scattered across Oscar’s belongings like a plague of cheerful, badly supervised insects. One on his water bottle. One on his laptop. Three on the rim of his helmet. Another on his notebook. One, most boldly, right on the back of his racesuit, just above his butt.
Oscar lifted his helmet with the terrible calm of a man presenting evidence before a court.
“Why,” he asked, “is your face on my visor?”
Lando looked at you immediately.
Not at Oscar.
At you.
You tried to keep it in. Truly, you did. You thought of serious things. Press briefings. Deadline pressure. Clive’s mother’s extremely beige living room.
Then Oscar turned the helmet, and tiny Lando beamed up at you from beneath the visor like an irritating little guardian angel.
You broke.
Lando grinned as though the sun had personally risen for him.
“No,” Oscar said, pointing at you. “Don’t encourage him.”
“I’m not.”
“You are visibly encouraging him.”
“I’m horrified.”
“You’re entertained, don’t lie.”
Lando leaned back against the counter, gleaming with satisfaction. “She has good humor.”
“She has poor impulse control when you’re around,” Oscar said.
Your laughter caught, just slightly.
Lando’s eyes flicked to yours.
There it was: that small, bright pause in the middle of the joke. One careless sentence turning the air warm enough to notice.
“Poor impulse control is the backbone of our friendship.”
“Well,” Oscar said. “I’m glad you are having fun together.”
You moved closer, examining the laptop. “How many are there?”
Lando suddenly found the ceiling interesting.
Oscar turned slowly. “Lando?”
“Just a few.”
“Define a few.”
Oscar closed his eyes.
A moment later, one of Lando’s engineers called his name. Lando gave Oscar a final smirk, which Oscar ignored with heroic commitment, then turned to you, smile returning, easy and too bright for the world.
“Behave,” you said.
He smiled. “You’d be bored.”
It was nothing.
It was always nothing.
Then he disappeared into the busier part of the garage, and the air he left behind seemed oddly less colourful.
Oscar began peeling a sticker from his laptop.
“You know,” he said, not looking at you, “the worst part is that you’re both equally annoying.”
“I am not equally annoying.”
“No,” he said. “You’re worse. You pretend you’re above it.”
You gave him a look. “Do you want help or not?”
He handed you the helmet.
For a while, neither of you spoke. You picked at a tiny Lando face near the visor while Oscar worked on his water bottle. The sticker came away slowly, stubbornly, as if even printed Lando refused to leave easily.
Then Oscar said, “You’re happy around him.”
Your fingers stilled.
“He’s funny,” you said.
“He is occasionally funny.”
“He makes everyone laugh.”
Oscar glanced sideways. “Not like that.”
You looked down. “Oscar.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You are very clearly saying something.”
“I’m saying you understand eachother very well.”
Somewhere behind you, Clive laughed at something one of his mates said. The sound reached you thinly, like it belonged to another room, another life.
“I’m engaged,” you said.
“I know.”
“So.”
“So nothing.” Oscar peeled another sticker from his bottle. “I just think sometimes people stay in things because they make sense on paper.”
Your throat tightened.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It usually isn’t.”
You gave a small laugh, though it had very little joy in it. “He’s my best friend.”
Oscar looked down. “Since you like him so much, might I interest you in some stickers?”
That got you. A soft laugh slipped out before you could stop it.
Oscar’s expression gentled, barely.
“You’re allowed to want more than just fine, I hope you know,” he said.
The words settled quietly, like dust in sunlight.
Fine.
That small, respectable word. The word you had used for years because it asked so little of you and explained even less.
Oscar reached over, removed the last sticker from the helmet, and placed it neatly on the front of your notebook.
You stared at it.
“Oscar.”
He handed it back with perfect calm. “You missed one.”
Tiny Lando smiled up at you from the cover.
For the first time all afternoon, Oscar’s mouth twitched.
You laughed.
Across the garage, Lando looked back at the sound.
You didn’t notice.
Oscar did.
And, for once, he let mercy win.
…
Zak Brown, in one of those bursts of cheerful American leadership which seemed to involve equal parts morale and mild chaos, had decided that what the McLaren team needed after a race weekend was bowling.
“Proper team bonding,” he had declared, as though he had not just invited forty exhausted people to throw heavy objects at polished wood under fluorescent lighting.
Still, the place had its charms.
The bowling alley sat tucked away from the worst of the Barcelona noise, glowing in red and blue neon, with plastic seats, sticky tables, music just loud enough to forgive everyone’s worst jokes, and the warm, greasy smell of chips drifting from the bar. Mechanics occupied two lanes already, competing with the seriousness of men who spent their professional lives calculating fractions of seconds and had now turned that precision toward knocking over ten pins.
Oscar stood near the ball return, looking as though he had been brought there against his will by a youth group.
Lando, naturally, looked delighted as he selected a bowling ball and held it up with far too much confidence.
“This,” he said, “is where champions are made.”
Oscar glanced at the ball. “You picked the child-size one.”
“It’s part of my strategy.”
“It’s being unable to lift the adult one.”
Lando ignored him and held the ball out slightly. “I can smell your fear from here, Osc.”
“That’s rental shoes.”
You laughed despite yourself, and Lando seized on it with the shameless speed of a man who had been waiting for one friendly witness.
“There,” he said. “She gets it.”
“She’s laughing at you,” Oscar said.
“She’s laughing near me. Counts.”
“It really doesn’t,” you said.
Lando shrugged with a big smirk. “I’m taking whatever I can, honestly.”
Clive was there too, though only technically. He had claimed a seat at the table with two of the garage boys, already holding a beer, one ankle resting over his knee as he settled into the easy masculine comfort of not participating. When you asked if he was playing, he glanced at the lanes and shrugged.
“Nah. I’m knackered.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, you go on. I’ll watch.”
You bowled first and did terribly, the ball veering with tragic determination toward the gutter.
Lando pressed both hands to his mouth. “Wow.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You don’t even need to.”
“I’m just speechless.”
“Good. Stay that way or I’ll throw the next bowlingball to your head.”
He grinned. “With your aim, I’m not sure that’s the best threat.”
Oscar picked up his ball. “Can you two flirt less near the machinery?”
You turned. “We are not flirting.”
Lando, at the exact same time, said, “This is coaching.”
Oscar looked between you both. “Right. My mistake. Very professional.”
You tried to glare at him, but unfortunately Lando was already demonstrating a bowling stance with such unnecessary confidence that it became impossible to remain dignified.
“See,” he said, stepping beside you, “it’s all in the wrist.”
“You look like you learned this from a children’s birthday party.”
“You go to a lot of children’s birthday parties?”
“Oh yeah. I love crushing their little spirits.”
Oscar sighed from a distance. “I believe that.”
On your next turn, perhaps through skill, perhaps through luck, perhaps because the universe enjoyed comedic timing, you threw a strike.
For half a second, you simply stood there, stunned.
Then Lando erupted.
He cheered so loudly that three mechanics turned around. “Yes! That’s my-” He stopped himself so quickly it almost hurt. “That’s… that is bowling. That’s what that is.”
You spun toward Clive automatically, face bright.
He was laughing at something on one of the boys’ phones.
He had not seen.
The happiness faltered before you could protect it.
Then Lando was there, sweeping you up before you could think, lifting you clean off the ground and spinning you once while you shrieked.
“Put me down!”
“Absolutely not. We are celebrating.”
“Lando!”
“Osc, did you see that?”
“I saw it, Lando. Now put the lady down.”
You were laughing too hard, hands gripping Lando’s shoulders as he set you back down. For one second, you stayed too close. His hands were still at your waist. Your cheeks were warm from laughing. His eyes flicked over your face, bright, proud, and soft around the edges.
Then Oscar coughed.
Lando let go.
You stepped back.
“So, whose turn is it?” Oscar said, breaking the tension a bit.
“Mine! Thank you,” Lando replied.
“Anytime, mate.”
The game continued, and somewhere between Lando celebrating a spare like a world championship, Oscar quietly becoming much better than both of you, and you accusing Lando of sabotaging your technique by hiding the good bowling balls, the evening began to feel golden.
The kind of happy feeling that crept in when no one was expecting it.
Clive remained at the table. He drank, laughed with his mates, and occasionally glanced over with the vague expression of a man seeing a television on mute. When you bowled another strike, Lando pointed dramatically toward the scoreboard.
“She’s unreal,” he announced.
Oscar nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”
You looked again toward Clive.
Nothing.
This time the disappointment arrived quieter, which made it worse.
A little later, Clive came up behind you with his jacket already in his hand.
“I’m tired, babe,” he said. “Let’s head back.”
“Oh.” You glanced at the lane, then at him. “Now?”
“Yeah. Long day.”
“I thought we could stay a bit longer.”
He gave a half-shrug. “You can if you want.”
It should have been generous. It sounded indifferent.
You hesitated, caught between the life you were supposed to return to and the one currently making Oscar argue with Lando about bowling shoes sizing.
Oscar, blessedly, looked up from the scoreboard.
“She’s winning,” he said. “You can’t make her leave now. Zak would be disappointed.”
Clive laughed shortly. “Right. Wouldn’t want that.”
You looked at him carefully. “Are you sure you don’t mind going alone?”
“Nah. Have fun.”
He kissed your cheek, quick, then left.
No argument. No jealousy. No disappointment.
Just gone.
You watched the door close behind him.
For a moment, the neon seemed a little too bright.
Then Lando’s voice came gently from beside you.
“You okay?”
You turned back.
He was not joking now. His expression had softened into something kind and careful. He knew you so well, he could read you like a book.
You smiled because that was easier. “I’m winning.”
His mouth lifted, but his eyes stayed on yours. “Yeah. You are.”
Oscar looked between you and groaned. “Right. I’m getting nachos.”
The game carried on. You bowled better after Clive left, which felt like a piece of information you did not want to examine. Lando accused you of hustling the entire team. You accused him of lacking discipline. Oscar returned with nachos and the defeated look of a man who had accepted that his evening had become a romantic subplot against his will.
When you went to the bar for drinks, you left Lando and Oscar alone near the lane.
Oscar watched you walk away, then turned slowly to Lando.
Lando did not look at him. “Shut up, please.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face is very loud.”
Oscar took a nacho. “You should just tell her.”
Lando’s smile faded.
Across the room, you leaned against the bar, laughing politely at something the bartender said, bright under the neon, free for one brief evening from the dull gravity of being overlooked.
Lando watched you.
“I can’t,” he said quietly.
Oscar followed his gaze.
For once, he did not make a joke.
Lando picked up his bowling ball, turned it once in his hands, and gave a small, helpless laugh.
“I’m so screwed.”
Oscar nodded. “Yeah.”
Then, after a pause, he added, “Also, you’re still losing.”
Lando looked at the scoreboard.
You were, in fact, beating him.
His grin returned, softer this time.
“Kick me when I’m down, Osc,” he said.
And when you came back with the drinks, he looked up at you like the night had handed him something beautiful, something he knew better than to reach for.
…
The streetlights blurred against the windscreen. Balconies passed above you in dark little rows. Somewhere, music came from an open window and vanished as Lando turned down another narrow street.
He was still arguing about the bowling.
“I’m not saying the system was rigged,” he said, one hand on the wheel, “but I am saying there should be an inquiry.”
“You lost.”
“Under suspicious circumstances.”
“You threw the ball into the gutter twice.”
“It was the shape of the ball that was off.”
“You blamed the shoes.”
“It was all rigged.”
You turned your head against the seat, smiling. “You’re such a sore loser.”
“I think we should do a rematch again soon.”
You laughed, and the sound filled the car for a second, warm and easy. Lando smiled at the road, though quieter than before.
The evening had left you light in a way you did not quite trust. Bowling shoes, neon lights, Lando making too much ceremony out of your strikes, Oscar looking as though he had been personally wronged by joy. Clive leaving early with no argument, no irritation, hardly even a glance back.
You had told yourself that meant nothing.
You had become very good at that.
Lando pulled up outside your Airbnb, a narrow cream building with a green door and a tired little lamp above it. The street was quiet. The engine hummed. For a moment, neither of you moved.
“Well,” you said, unbuckling your seatbelt with unnecessary brightness. “Thank you for the lift.”
He did not answer.
You looked over.
His hands were still on the wheel, his thumbs resting against the leather, but his expression had gone somewhere far away. All night he had been quick, impossible, alive with some new joke before the last one had properly ended. Now he was still.
“Lando?”
He breathed out, almost a laugh but not quite.
“I need to say something.”
The words changed the car at once.
You felt it before he went on. The sudden weight. The drop in your stomach. The terrible, instinctive knowledge that some conversations arrived with a door behind them, and once opened, would not close neatly again.
“Don’t,” you said.
He looked at you then, and the softness in his face made it worse.
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“I think I do.”
A faint, sad smile moved across his mouth. “Yeah. You probably do.”
You looked down at your hands. Your ring caught the streetlight in a dull flash.
“I’m engaged,” you said, because it was the fact you had. The shield you had. The oldest, easiest thing to put between you.
“I know.”
“Then don’t.”
“I’ve been trying not to.”
The honesty of that made your throat tighten.
He looked back through the windscreen, jaw working once, as though he could still decide to swallow the whole thing down and drive away. Then his hands left the wheel. He sat back, quiet for a second, and when he spoke again his voice was lower.
“I’m so in love with you.”
There was no drama in the way he said it. No grandness. That was what undid you. He said it like something exhausted and plain. Like a truth that had been standing in the room for months, waiting for both of you to stop pretending it was furniture.
“No,” you whispered.
His eyes closed briefly.
“Don’t say that,” you said.
“I know.”
“No, Lando, you can’t just-”
“I know.”
“You can’t say that to me.”
“I know.” He looked at you then, and there was something almost helpless in his face. “But I can’t keep doing this.”
Your throat tightened. “Doing what?”
“This.” His voice was quiet, but the word seemed to fill the whole car. “Pretending I don’t notice when you look for me in a room. Pretending I only make those stupid jokes because I like the sound of my own voice. Pretending it doesn’t ruin me a little when you laugh at something I say and then go back to him.”
You looked away.
“Lando.”
“No, I know.” He nodded quickly, as if he could already hear every sensible objection before you gave it to him. “I know what I’m allowed to be. I know where I’m supposed to stand. I know I’m your friend.”
“You are my friend.”
His mouth pulled into something too sad to be a smile.
“Am I?”
The question was so soft it hurt.
You stared at him.
He swallowed. “Because I don’t think friends do this. I don’t think friends sit in parked cars and feel like they’re about to lose something they never had. I don’t think friends have to remind themselves not to touch each other every time they stand too close.”
Your eyes burned.
“That’s not fair.”
“I know.” His voice cracked slightly. “I know it’s not.”
“You can’t say that.”
“I know,” he said again, but this time the words sounded almost broken. “But you know it too. That’s the worst part. You know we’re not just friends. You know this isn’t normal.”
The silence after that was unbearable because it did not feel like accusation.
It felt like recognition.
You looked down at your ring, at the small dull glint of it in the streetlight, and for one terrible second it looked less like a promise and more like proof.
“I’m engaged,” you whispered.
Lando’s eyes softened, but he did not look away.
“I know.”
You looked away because if you kept looking at him, you would not be able to remember the correct shape of your life.
Clive. The ring. Your parents knowing his parents. Years of birthdays and Christmases and old photographs. The kind of history that wrapped itself around you until leaving it felt less like making a choice and more like tearing fabric.
“I have a life mapped out I can’t just leave behind,” you said.
“I know.”
The silence that followed was worse than arguing.
Lando swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
You expected that to make it easier.
It did not.
“I didn’t want to do this to you,” he said. “I just needed you to know once. Just once. Because I can’t stand the thought of you thinking I only want to be this.”
He gave a small, broken little laugh. “I mean, I do. Obviously. I love being your friend. I love all of it. The stupid conversations, the way you pretend you’re above my jokes and then laugh anyway, the way you look at Oscar when he’s about to murder me. I love that you know when I’m being an idiot and when I’m actually not okay.”
He paused.
“But I don’t only want that.”
The words settled between you, quiet and devastating.
You reached for the door handle.
Not because you wanted to leave.
Because you did not.
You just had to.
Your fingers curled around the handle. He did not stop you. He only watched, breathing carefully, as if movement itself had become too much.
You should have opened the door.
Instead, you looked back.
Lando was close enough now that you could see the tiredness around his eyes, the thin crack in the confidence he wore so easily in every other room. He looked frightened of what he had said, but not sorry for feeling it.
And perhaps that was what broke you.
You leaned in at the same time he did.
The kiss was gentle at first, almost unbearably so. His hand lifted to your face slowly, carefully, giving you time to pull away. You didn’t. His thumb brushed your cheek, and you kissed him again, a little less carefully this time, because the first had only proved what both of you already knew.
The second broke the surface.
It was not wild, not yet. It was worse than that. Familiar. Like arriving somewhere you had been trying not to call home. His mouth moved against yours with a tenderness that made your whole chest hurt. Your hand found the collar of his hoodie, holding there as though the world had tilted and he was the only steady thing in it.
For a few seconds, there was no Clive. No ring. No garage full of people who had been noticing before you dared to. No careful explanations.
Only Lando, warm and close and trembling slightly beneath your hand.
When you broke apart, he stayed near, his forehead almost touching yours.
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” he whispered.
Your eyes closed.
The truth came out small.
“Me too.”
His breath caught.
And then the world came back.
The ring. The green door. The life waiting upstairs. The years behind you.
He moved as if to kiss you again, and you pulled back before you could let yourself.
“No,” you said, tears rising too quickly now. “I can’t.”
He went still at once.
You shook your head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said, though his voice had gone rough. “Don’t be sorry.”
“I have to be with him.”
He looked at you for a moment, and the hurt in his face was so quiet it was almost worse than if he had said something angry.
Then he nodded.
“It’s okay.”
That single word nearly ruined you.
You opened the door.
The night air slipped in, cool against your face. You stepped out before you could change your mind, before you could say his name, before you could climb back into the warmth of the car and choose the part of your heart that had been awake all evening.
At the door, you looked back.
Lando was still there, both hands now resting in his lap, staring ahead as if moving too soon would break something.
For one impossible second, you thought of going back.
Then you turned the key and went inside.
…
The next race weekend arrived grey around the edges, that sad weather that made everything look as if it had been drawn in pencil: the pit lane, the hospitality roofs, the morning faces of people who’d been working late and lacking sleep.
Lando arrived with his headphones on.
That was the first thing Oscar noticed.
The second was that he did not say anything.
No comment about Oscar’s trainers. No accusation that the weather had been personally arranged to ruin his hair. No attempt to tell anyone that he had discovered a new excuse to wear heelies in public. He only walked into the garage, nodded once at someone from the team, and disappeared into the quiet corner near the back with a bottle of water in his hand.
The garage, which was never truly still, seemed to notice anyway.
Lando without noise was not peace. It was a storm brooding.
He sat with one ankle crossed over the other, headphones covering his ears, cap low, trying so hard to disappear that he became the first thing anyone noticed.
People passed. Screens glowed. Mechanics spoke around him. Somewhere a tyre blanket was being adjusted, somewhere else a tool clattered too loudly against the floor.
He flinched at none of it.
He was thinking about Barcelona.
He had told himself not to. Then again, he had told himself many things lately, and most of them had proved useless.
The kiss kept returning in pieces.
Her breath before it happened. Her hand in his shirt. The small, ruined honesty of me too. The green door swallowing her back into the life that had been waiting for her.
And after that, only the streetlight, the quiet car, and the stupid fact that his mouth still remembered her.
Every bone in his body was begging him, do not look for her.
So naturally, he looked.
Not obviously. Not desperately. Only in the little ways a person looks when he is trying to convince himself he is above it. A glance toward the garage entrance. Another toward the media pen corridor. Once, when someone laughed outside, his head lifted before he could stop it.
It was not her.
Of course it was not.
He took a drink of water and hated how ordinary the bottle felt in his hand.
Then he saw a new guy.
Not new to the world, obviously. New to the garage. Standing by the tires, headset around his neck, speaking to one of Oscar’s mechanics with the slightly too-eager nodding of someone trying to learn names quickly. He was young, or perhaps not as tired yet. His shirt was too clean. His lanyard sat wrong.
Lando stared for half a second longer than he should have.
Oscar appeared beside him.
He did not say anything at first. Oscar had a merciful side, though it often wore the disguise of exhaustion.
Lando pulled one side of his headphones back. “What?”
Oscar looked toward the new guy.
Then back at him.
“Didn’t you hear?”
Lando’s grip tightened around the bottle. “Hear what?”
There was a pause, not long enough to be dramatic, but long enough to change the air.
“Clive quit.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
The garage continued. The screens glowed. A mechanic laughed softly at something near the front. Outside, the grey morning pressed itself against the open doors.
Lando blinked. “What?”
Oscar kept his voice low. “He quit after Barcelona.”
“Why?”
Oscar’s expression shifted, careful now. “Apparently they broke off the engagement.”
The words moved through Lando slowly, as if they had to pass through several locked rooms before he understood them.
They broke off the engagement.
He looked down at the bottle in his hands.
For one wild, selfish second, hope rose in him so quickly it almost felt like panic.
Then guilt followed.
Then the memory of her tears forming in the passenger seat.
Then the kiss.
He swallowed. “Is she-”
“I don’t know,” Oscar said before he could finish. Softer, then, “I haven’t seen her.”
Lando nodded, though he was not sure why.
The new guy laughed at something near Oscar’s station. Life, with its usual poor taste, continued.
Oscar studied him. “You okay?”
Lando almost laughed.
No. Yes. Maybe. Terrified. Happy. Sick with it. Alive for the first time in a week and ashamed of how badly he wanted to be.
“Yeah,” he said.
Oscar gave him a look.
Lando put his headphones back around his neck. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” Lando admitted quietly. “I’m not.”
The garage opened brighter as the clouds shifted outside, a pale wash of morning light spilling over the floor, over the tyres.
Lando looked toward the entrance again.
This time, he did not pretend it was accidental.
…
By Friday afternoon, the paddock had remembered how to breathe. As did Lando.
He had spent the whole session doing what he was supposed to do. Brake points. Balance. Feedback. Corner exits. A small complaint about rear stability that his engineer had written down with the patience of a priest taking confession. He had spoken when spoken to, driven when required, and given absolutely no indication that his heart had been behaving like an unsupervised animal since Oscar told him Clive had quit.
Apparently they broke off the engagement.
The words had not left him.
They had followed him into the car, sat with him through the out-lap, returned every time the straight gave his mind half a second too much space. He had tried to be sensible about it. He had failed with impressive consistency.
And then he saw you.
You were standing near the barrier with your microphone in one hand and your notes in the other, talking to one of your crew members. The afternoon light caught along your hair, warm and forgiving. You were dressed for work, composed for work, smiling that professional little smile he knew too well.
Except it was different now, as if a burden had been set down after years of carrying it.
Lando stopped walking.
Only for half a second.
Oscar, coming up behind him, nearly walked into his shoulder.
“Oh,” Oscar said dryly. “There she is.”
Lando did not look at him. “Don’t.”
Oscar followed his gaze toward you, then softened in the smallest possible way. “Go on, then.”
Lando swallowed. “I can do sky news first?”
“Man up.”
“Damn it, Osc.”
Oscar looked at the McLaren garage behind them. “I’ll be waiting here, if you need me.”
Lando finally glanced at him.
Oscar only lifted his brows, calm and infuriating. “Try not to make it weird.”
Lando gave a short laugh. “Bit late for that.”
Then he walked toward you.
You saw him when he was close enough that pretending not to would have become childish. For one second, your expression opened before you could arrange it. Not entirely. Not in any way the camera would have caught. But enough for him to see the relief, the nerves, the question.
His chest went tight.
“Hi,” he said.
You looked at him, microphone lowering slightly. “Hi.”
It was ridiculous that one word could hold so much.
Your crew member gave a little nod toward the camera, blissfully unaware of the emotional architecture collapsing two feet away. “We’re rolling in ten.”
You cleared your throat, glanced down at your notes, and became, with noble effort, a journalist again.
Lando tried not to smile.
He failed.
The camera started.
“Lando, solid running in FP1, though we heard a few comments on the radio about the rear of the car. How did it feel out there?”
He answered properly at first. Mostly. Something about balance, a little instability in the slower corners, track evolution, nothing dramatic. The sort of answer he could give in his sleep. He had given it a hundred times.
The answer should have ended there.
It would have, with anyone else.
But your mouth betrayed you first, curving before you could stop it. “So the rear was giving you trouble?”
Lando’s eyes flicked up.
Instantly.
“Careful,” he said.
“I’m asking about the car.”
“Are you?”
You looked down at your notes, mostly because looking at him had become a liability. “You said it felt unstable.”
“I did.”
“Loose on entry?”
His smile grew slowly, like he had all the time in the world and every intention of misusing it.
“That depends,” he said. “Are we still talking about turn seven?”
“Lando.”
“What? I’m clarifying.”
“You’re absolutely not.”
“No, I am.” He leaned a little closer to the microphone, voice dropping just enough to be dangerous. “I want to make sure I’m giving you exactly what you’re asking for.”
Behind the camera, your producer shifted.
You held his gaze for a fraction too long.
“I’ll keep it professional,” you said.
“That’ll be new for us.”
Your laugh slipped out before you could stop it, and Lando’s smile changed. Not into the old thing, not the easy garage grin, but something gentler, fuller, the expression of a man watching a door open and trying not to run through it.
Charles, standing nearby with his own microphone waiting, looked over with raised brows and a smile he clearly did not intend to hide. George, next in line, leaned slightly toward Carlos, who had just joined him near the barrier.
George murmured, “Is this part of the broadcast?”
Carlos folded his arms, watching with the calm satisfaction of a man seeing something inevitable finally stop pretending. “It should be.”
Your producer, less romantic and more concerned with employment law, said from behind the camera, “Guys. We are still live.”
You blinked, suddenly remembering several horrifying facts at once. The camera. The crew. The paddock. Your job.
Lando looked at the lens, then back at you.
“Oh,” he said, smiling. “That’s good.”
Your heart tripped.
“Lando.”
He took half a step closer. Just enough to make the air between you change.
The entire paddock seemed to tilt its attention in your direction.
He looked at you the way he had in the car, only now there was no darkness to hide in, no door waiting for you to disappear behind, no ring on your finger catching the streetlight like an accusation.
Only you.
Only him.
His eyes flicked to your mouth, then back to yours.
You should have stopped him. You did not.
He leaned in and kissed you.
For one breath, the whole world held still.
Then you kissed him back.
Lando’s hand came lightly to your waist, careful even now, even with everyone watching. The kiss was soft, not long enough to be scandalous in the way people would claim later, but long enough to make pretending impossible.
When he pulled back, he was smiling.
Not smugly. Not even triumphantly.
Happily.
So plainly happy it almost hurt to look at.
Your face had gone warm. Your microphone was still in your hand, though tilted uselessly toward the floor. Somewhere to your left, George made a strangled little sound of delight.
“Well,” George said, polished even in chaos, “I’d say that answers the chemistry question.”
Charles laughed into his hand. Carlos only nodded once, deeply pleased.
Oscar stood near the McLaren garage with both hands on his hips, looking directly at Lando with the expression of a man who was reliefed to be freed from the seemingly everlasting will-they-wont-they.
Lando glanced over.
Oscar pointed at him, then at the camera, then shook his head as if to say: unbelievable.
You laughed.
That was what finally broke the strange, glowing tension of it. Your laugh. Real and helpless and bright.
Lando looked back at you, and this time there was no need to hide the softness in his face.
He pulled you gently into him, not for the cameras, not for the paddock, but because, for once, he could. His arms settled around you with a quiet certainty that made your throat tighten. You let yourself lean into him.
The world was still loud but against his chest, beneath the noise of cameras and laughter and someone from your crew whispering, “We are so getting called into a meeting,” there was a small, impossible peace.
Lando bent his head, his voice low against your ear.
“So,” he whispered, “dinner after work?”
You pulled back just enough to look at him.
He was trying to be casual. Badly. His smile was bright, nervous at the edges, hopeful in a way that belonged more to the boy in the car than the driver in front of the cameras.
You thought of Clive then.
Not with guilt exactly. Not anymore. With sadness, yes. With gratitude for the years that had not been wasted simply because they had ended. With the strange tenderness one feels for a life that almost fit.
Then you looked at Lando.
At the boy who had made you laugh when things were dull, made room for you without asking, seen you before you had known you wanted to be seen. Your friend. Not only your friend. Never only that, not really.
You smiled.
The answer was very small.
Just a nod.
But Lando’s whole face changed.
George lifted a finger. “For the record, I called this during the nuggets interview.”
“You called nothing,” Oscar said.
Charles, still laughing, looked at you with open amusement. “Congratulations, I think?”
Your producer finally lowered her headset and stared at you both. “Can we please finish the segment?”
You looked down at the microphone in your hand.
Then at Lando.
He grinned.
You lifted the mic between you, trying very hard to sound professional while still standing inside the circle of his arm.
“Right,” you said, breathless and smiling. “So. About that rear stability.”
don't forget where you belong
Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman
Summary: This chapter follows Amelie begins realizing how much Lando has woven himself into her family’s life, while she hasn’t fully done the same with his.
Wordcount: 12.1 k
Warnings: none
full masterlist // request over here!
May 9th, 2026 - Myrtle Beach, SC
The South Carolina sun sat warm and golden across the golf course, the late afternoon light stretching lazily over the endless green hills and perfectly trimmed fairways of the golf course, everything carrying that strange calmness golf tournaments always seemed to have despite the constant murmur of people following behind players. The air smelled faintly like fresh grass and sunscreen, mixed with the distant salty breeze drifting in from somewhere beyond the course, and the entire atmosphere felt painfully different from the chaos both she and Lando normally lived inside. No engines screaming through radios. No flashing paddock lights. No frantic schedules stitched together minute by minute. Just the soft clapping of spectators every few minutes, the occasional polite cheer echoing over the course, and the rhythmic sound of golf shoes moving against grass while players disappeared into the distance beneath bright Carolina skies.
Amelie sat sideways in one of the golf carts parked near the edge of the fairway, one leg tucked beneath her comfortably while Charlie rested sprawled dramatically across her lap like a child being personally victimized by the fact he wasn’t allowed to sprint freely through the grass. The front of the cart still displayed Lando’s name in bold lettering from the event, though he himself stood several yards away now with a club in hand, cap low over his eyes while he lined up another shot with the concentration of someone pretending golf wasn’t consuming his entire personality lately.
She honestly still didn’t understand how he had managed to become so obsessed with this sport.
Mostly because she hated it.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just deeply and sincerely.
The entire thing felt painfully slow to her, every hole somehow lasting the length of a small war despite the fact nothing seemed to happen except rich men applauding softly at grass. Her attention span lasted approximately six minutes before disappearing entirely, which was exactly why she had spent most of the afternoon talking to Charlie instead of watching the actual tournament.
Charlie, unfortunately, was also beginning to lose patience.
The second another golf cart rolled somewhere nearby, his ears perked immediately before his entire body shifted excitedly in her lap, tail wagging hard enough to shake against her stomach as if the sight of new people was the greatest event of his life.
—You traitor,— Amelie muttered softly under her breath, scratching behind his ears while trying to stop him from climbing fully out of her arms.
A soft knock echoed lightly against the roof of the cart above her head before a familiar voice followed it.
—Knock knock.—
Amelie turned immediately, looking up to find Adam Norris standing beside the cart with an amused smile already pulling at his mouth beneath the brim of his cap, sunglasses pushed slightly down his nose as he looked between her and the dog currently trying to launch himself toward him.
—Hi,— she greeted warmly, immediately shifting slightly to the side. —Please, sit.—
—You sure?— Adam asked politely, though he was already moving closer.
—Of course,— she nodded quickly.
The second he climbed into the seat beside her, Charlie practically lost his mind with excitement, wriggling violently in her lap while trying to climb toward him. Amelie laughed immediately, tightening her hold around the dog before carefully lowering him closer instead so he could sniff Adam’s hand properly.
—Sorry,— she said through another laugh, shaking her head while Charlie enthusiastically licked Adam’s fingers like he had never known love before. —He gets really excited around literally anyone that isn’t me or Lando.—
Adam laughed warmly, scratching Charlie beneath the chin while the dog nearly vibrated from happiness. —Honestly? Fair enough. I’d probably get sick of you two as well if I lived with you permanently.—
Amelie gasped softly in fake offense, one hand moving dramatically against her chest. —That’s actually so rude.—
Their attention shifted automatically toward the course a second later as applause rippled across the spectators nearby, a louder cheer rising softly through the air. Both of them looked up in time to see Lando straighten from his swing several yards away, his body relaxing with immediate satisfaction as the ball disappeared cleanly across the fairway.
Even from this far away, the smugness radiating off him was visible.
Adam shook his head lightly beneath his breath. —He’s been insufferable all week because of this,— he murmured.
Amelie laughed quietly, watching Lando adjust his glove while a few people nearby congratulated the shot. The sunlight caught against the pale cream golf polo stretched across his shoulders, the fitted clothes somehow making him look annoyingly attractive while doing the most boring sport imaginable.
Adam glanced toward her after a second, amusement flickering across his face. —Lando told me you’ve been joining him a lot lately. Didn’t know you liked golf.—
The laugh that escaped her this time came immediately.
—Oh no,— she corrected quickly, grinning as she shook her head. —I hate golf actually.—
Adam blinked once before laughing louder.
—Seriously?—
—Completely serious,— she admitted shamelessly. —I think it’s one of the most painfully slow things I’ve ever experienced in my life.—
Adam looked genuinely delighted by that confession.
Amelie smiled helplessly before glancing back toward Lando again, watching him laugh with another player while slinging the club casually over his shoulder. —But he asked me to come,— she added softer now, almost embarrassed by how simple the explanation sounded once spoken out loud. —And apparently I’m very weak when it comes to him, so… here I am.—
Adam’s expression softened almost immediately into something quieter, more knowing.
—Trust me,— he said with a small laugh. —He’s exactly the same with you.—
The words settled somewhere warm inside her chest.
Her eyes drifted back toward Lando automatically after that, lingering there a second longer than necessary while he walked further down the fairway beneath the heavy afternoon sun. The actual truth—the embarrassing truth—was that she would probably follow him almost anywhere if he asked her with that stupid smile on his face. The fact he looked unfairly attractive in golf clothes certainly didn’t help either. Neither did the way he always came back from these tournaments flushed and competitive and worked up with leftover adrenaline still humming beneath his skin.
Absolutely none of which she was about to explain to his father.
The silence between her and Adam afterward settled comfortably instead of awkwardly, both of them simply watching the course while Charlie finally relaxed enough to rest his head heavily against her arm again. Somewhere nearby another crowd applauded politely. Birds drifted lazily above the trees bordering the course. The entire afternoon felt strangely peaceful in a way her life rarely allowed anymore.
Adam eventually spoke again, quieter this time.
—Lando told me you two are flying back to Mexico tonight.—
Amelie turned toward him slightly before nodding. —Yeah. Mother’s Day tomorrow,— she explained softly. —I wanted to get there in time to see my mum. Spend some time with everyone before everything gets busy again.—
Adam nodded immediately, understanding flickering across his face. —Of course. Family’s important.—
There was something slightly heavier beneath his tone now though, subtle enough that she noticed it immediately.
Amelie noticed it immediately.
Not enough for someone else to catch it, probably. Adam’s voice stayed warm, calm, easy in the way it always was around people, but there was a slight shift underneath it now, something more thoughtful settling behind the casualness of the conversation. His eyes stayed on the course for another second, following Lando as he disappeared further down the fairway with the small crowd trailing behind him, before he exhaled softly through his nose and leaned back a little more comfortably against the seat.
—I’m glad he goes with you there so much lately,— Adam admitted after a moment, his tone quieter now. —Honestly… I think it’s good for him.—
Amelie turned slightly toward him, listening carefully.
The breeze moved softly through the course around them, carrying distant applause from another hole further away while Charlie shifted sleepily against her lap, finally exhausted from all the excitement. Somewhere nearby another golf cart rolled slowly past. The sunlight had started softening into late afternoon gold now, warming everything in long shadows across the grass.
Adam smiled faintly to himself before continuing. —He’s always loved your family a lot,— he said. —You can tell he feels comfortable there. Relaxed in a way he usually doesn’t let himself be anymore.—
Amelie’s expression softened almost immediately at that, her fingers absentmindedly scratching slowly through Charlie’s fur while she watched Lando in the distance. He had stopped beside the next cart now, laughing at something another player said while balancing the club across his shoulders carelessly, the bright South Carolina sunlight catching against the gold edges of his hair beneath the cap. Even from here she could tell he was happier today than he had been all week, lighter somehow after Miami, after New York, after the nonstop pressure both of them had been drowning under lately.
—He loves being there,— she admitted quietly. —My family treats him like he’s been there his whole life already.—
Adam smiled softly at that, though the expression carried something almost emotional beneath it now, something quieter than amusement. His gaze stayed fixed ahead instead of on her, like it made the conversation easier somehow.
—I know,— he murmured. —And I’m grateful for that, genuinely. You and your family have given him a place where he can breathe a bit. That matters more than you probably realize.—
The words settled heavily between them, not uncomfortable but serious in a way the conversation hadn’t been before. Amelie turned slightly more toward him now, paying closer attention, sensing there was something else sitting beneath everything he was saying.
Adam exhaled softly through his nose before finally looking at her properly.
—I hope you know we want the same thing too though,— he admitted carefully.
Her brows pulled together faintly.
He gave her a small, almost apologetic smile immediately afterward, like he already worried he was overstepping before he had even fully said what he meant.
—I don’t really know how to explain this without sounding dramatic,— he said with a quiet laugh beneath his breath. —But… sometimes it feels like because Lando loves being with your family so much, everyone naturally goes there. Holidays, free weekends, birthdays, little breaks between races. Which makes complete sense, obviously. You miss your family. They’re important to you. Nobody blames you for that.—
Amelie stayed quiet, listening carefully now.
Adam’s fingers tapped lightly once against his knee before he continued more slowly, choosing his words with obvious care.
—But we miss him too sometimes,— he admitted softly.
Something in her chest tightened immediately.
Not because his words were cruel.
Quite the opposite.
Because they were gentle.
Because he was trying so hard not to make her feel guilty while still being honest.
The breeze shifted warmly around them again, carrying the distant sound of applause from somewhere further down the course while Lando disappeared briefly behind a slope of bright green hills, completely unaware of the conversation unfolding back here.
Adam smiled faintly to himself before continuing. —I think… for him, you became his person so naturally that now wherever you go becomes home automatically to him. And honestly, I love that. I love seeing him loved the way you love him.— His expression softened more as he looked at her. —But I also don’t ever want you to feel like you’re visiting us. Or like we’re just his side of life.—
Amelie swallowed quietly.
—Because you’re family too,— Adam said simply.
The honesty in his voice hit harder than she expected.
Not accusatory.
Not possessive.
Just painfully sincere in the way only parents could be when talking about their child.
Amelie looked down briefly at Charlie resting across her lap, her fingers slowing against the dog’s fur while Adam’s words settled carefully somewhere deep in her chest. Guilt wasn’t exactly the right emotion for it, because nobody had ever made her feel unwelcome around Lando’s family. Quite the opposite, actually. They had embraced her so naturally from the beginning that sometimes she forgot there had once been a version of her life where they weren’t part of it. Still, hearing it said out loud like this forced her to realize something she maybe hadn’t fully noticed before—that somewhere along the line, she had unconsciously built their life around her own family simply because it felt easier. Familiar. Safe.
Adam noticed the slight shift in her expression immediately and smiled softly, almost reassuringly, before she could spiral too far into overthinking it.
—I’m not trying to make you feel bad,— he added gently. —God, that’s the last thing I want.—
—I know,— she answered quickly, looking back at him. —I know you’re not.—
The sincerity in her voice softened him instantly.
The afternoon sunlight filtered warmly across the cart around them, catching softly against the edges of Charlie’s fur and the gold bracelets around her wrist while another polite burst of applause echoed from somewhere down the course. The entire conversation felt strangely intimate in a way she hadn’t expected from a random golf afternoon in South Carolina.
Adam nodded once before continuing more carefully now, like he was trying to explain something difficult without making it heavier than necessary.
—I think sometimes with Lando… people forget how much he gives of himself to the people he loves,— he admitted quietly. —He’ll rearrange everything around them without even realizing he’s doing it. He always has.—
Amelie’s chest tightened immediately because she knew exactly what he meant.
She had lived inside that love for years now.
The kind that bent instinctively toward her without asking for anything in return.
The kind that boarded flights half-asleep just to spend twelve hours in Mexico between races because she missed home.
The kind that memorized her family’s birthdays and favorite foods and learned enough Spanish to joke with her cousins at dinner tables.
The kind that made her mother coffee every morning when they stayed in Mérida because he knew she liked it before church.
Adam smiled faintly when he saw recognition flicker across her face.
—He doesn’t do things halfway,— he said simply.
The words lingered there softly between them while both of them watched Lando in the distance preparing another shot, completely unaware that he himself had become the center of such a quiet conversation. The crowd nearby shifted around him slowly, cameras following while he laughed at something another golfer said, relaxed in a way Formula One rarely allowed him to be.
Amelie swallowed softly before finally speaking again.
—I never want you guys feeling like I’m taking him away from you,— she admitted honestly, her voice quieter now. —I think maybe sometimes I just… default to my family because my life’s been built around them for so long. Especially with my schedules. But I don’t want your family feeling like they’re separate from ours either.—
Adam’s expression softened almost immediately at that.
He nodded slowly once, thoughtful.
—I know that,— he said gently. —And honestly, this probably isn’t even something I should’ve brought up today. It’s just… when your kids grow up and suddenly belong to someone else too, it’s an adjustment sometimes.— A soft laugh escaped him beneath his breath. —Not a bad one. Just different.—
The honesty of it made something ache inside her.
Because she could hear how much love sat underneath every word.
Not just love for Lando.
Love for her too.
For the life they were building together whether they fully realized it yet or not.
Amelie’s eyes drifted back toward the course again, lingering on Lando while he finally took the shot, the ball flying cleanly across the fairway before another ripple of applause followed behind it. The immediate grin that broke across his face afterward was boyish in the most unfair way, smug and bright and completely unaware that both his girlfriend and father were currently emotional over him from a golf cart several yards away.
A small smile pulled at her mouth helplessly.
—I think sometimes I forget he’s not only mine now too,— she admitted quietly before she could stop herself.
The words slipped out softer than intended.
Adam looked at her immediately after that, something warm and almost emotional flickering across his face at the confession. Not because she sounded possessive, but because she sounded young suddenly. Young and deeply in love and trying to navigate what it meant to share a life with someone whose heart existed in a hundred places at once.
His smile softened.
—That’s probably because to him, you are home now,— he said simply.
Her throat tightened embarrassingly fast.
Silence settled between them again after that, though it no longer felt heavy. Just thoughtful. Warm. The kind of quiet that existed between people who understood each other a little better now than they had an hour ago.
Charlie shifted sleepily against her lap while the late afternoon breeze moved softly through the trees bordering the course, carrying distant laughter and applause over the endless green hills. Somewhere nearby another golf cart passed slowly. The entire afternoon glowed golden beneath the lowering sun, peaceful in a way that almost felt unreal compared to the constant movement of the lives they normally lived.
The sound of approaching footsteps across the grass eventually pulled both their attention forward again.
Lando.
He was walking back toward the cart now with his cap turned backward, one hand carrying the club loosely while the other adjusted his glove distractedly. Sweat darkened slightly at the collar of his polo beneath the heat, sunglasses hanging lazily from the neckline while the flushed color still sitting across his cheeks made him look unfairly attractive in a way Amelie absolutely hated acknowledging this often.
The second he got close enough, his attention landed immediately on them sitting together.
His brows lifted slightly.
—Why do you both look like you just discussed state secrets?— he asked suspiciously, slowing beside the cart.
Amelie immediately looked away to hide the smile threatening at her mouth.
Adam, somehow even calmer than before, simply shrugged lightly. —Maybe we did.—
Lando narrowed his eyes instantly. —That’s concerning.—
Charlie perked up excitedly at the sight of him and immediately started wriggling again, practically launching himself from Amelie’s lap this time before she finally gave up and let him go. The dog bounded toward Lando happily while he bent automatically to catch him with one arm, laughing softly when Charlie nearly smacked him directly in the face with affection.
The sight alone softened something immediately inside her chest again.
Lando glanced between both of them once more while scratching Charlie behind the ears suspiciously. —Seriously. What were you talking about?—
Amelie and Adam shared the briefest glance.
A silent agreement.
Neither of them said a word.
Which only made Lando more suspicious as he looked between them with narrowed eyes while both of them fought smiles now.
—Oh my God,— he muttered slowly. —You definitely talked about me.—
--------------
liked by schecoperez, ciscanorris1, and others
lando: good week, bad golf ⛳️🏌🏻♂️
thanks @oneflightinternational for having us at the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic
View all 902 comments
maxfewtrell: “bad golf” is being generous mate → lando: still beat you → quadrant: fact check pending
ciscanorris1: charlie stole every photo 🥹 → lando: as always
ameliedayman: charlie carried the whole team honestly → lando: moral support is important → fanameliee: THEIR CHILD 😭
oscarpiastri: didn’t mention the amount of balls lost → lando: unnecessary comment → alex_albon: no no let him speak
ameliecore: charlie at the golf course 😭⛳️ → cherryvibes: little gentleman
alex_albon: golf outfit was strong though → lando: finally someone appreciates me → lilymhe: the bar is low
carlossainz55: we should keep you away from golf courses → lando: jealous of my swing → fanpageamelie: this friendship 😭
sunsetamelie: the golf bag with his logo omg → goldenhouramelie: athlete final boss → softamelie: so cool actually
lanfan44: he posted amelie first btw 😭 → papayaprincess: priorities → loveroflan: as he should
fanpageamelie: the way these two somehow make golf look romantic 😭 → cherryvibes: impossible talent
georgerussell63: impressive commitment to mediocrity → lando: thanks george
flo_norris_showjumping: who let you near a golf club → lando: oneflight apparently → fanameliee: screaming
pierregasly: future golf champion → lando: absolutely not → estebanocon: self awareness is important
amelievibes: he’s living his retired dad dreams already
rebeccadonaldson: cutest little family outing 💚 → ameliedayman: charlie says thank you → softamelie: STOPPP
fanameliee: the first pic looks like an album cover 😭 → goldenhouramelie: soft launch family vibes → softclouds: painfully cute
papayagirl: “good week bad golf” meanwhile he looks happy as hell 😭 → loveroflan: because amelie and charlie were there
papayadreams: “thanks for having us” THE US 😭 → loveroflan: i noticed that immediately → lanmeliehub: same braincell
quadrant: athlete. golfer. father. icon. → lando: father 😭 → maxfewtrell: yes
softamelie: charlie probably had a better score than lando → goldenhouramelie: honestly likely
mclaren: we’ll stick to racing 🧡 → lando: probably for the best → oscarpiastri: agreed
zbrownceo: next step: pro golf tour → lando: let’s not get ahead of ourselves → fanameliee: zak enabling him 😭
martingarrix: looks like a good day to me mate → lando: very good day → papayaprincess: aw 🥹
schecoperez: golf suits you hermano → ameliedayman: don’t encourage him → lando: thank you checo
ameliecore: the way he casually posted domestic soft life content 😭 → cherryvibes: retired dad aesthetic → dreamygirlie: elite lifestyle
papayagirl: no because the first pic looks SO intimate and cozy 🥹 → loveroflan: you can feel the happiness
stelladayman: charlie was clearly the professional there → lando: carried us honestly → fanpageamelie: the family comments 😭
elysiadayman: the first pic is too cute stop → ameliedayman: 🥹🤍
kikagomes: not bad not bad 👏 → lando: finally recognition → pierregasly: from one bad golfer to another
sunsetamelie: i just know amelie bullied his golf skills all day 😭 → goldenhouramelie: lovingly though → softamelie: obviously
lanfan44: imagine being at the golf course and seeing world champion lando norris walking around with amelie and charlie 😭
danielricciardo: nearly invited you to my team after that swing → lando: biggest compliment ever → papayagirl: DANNY 😭
fanameliee: “thanks for having us” they’re a UNIT your honor → goldenhouramelie: exactly
fanpageamelie: he posted golfing but somehow the entire post is just “i love my girlfriend” 😭 → cherryvibes: exactly → dreamygirlie: loud and clear
amelievibes: this man is in every possible era at once → goldenhouramelie: golfer era → softclouds: boyfriend era → sunsetamelie: photographer era
papayadreams: charlie’s honestly becoming the most famous dog in motorsport → loveroflan: tiny celebrity
softamelie: the vibes of this post are INSANELY comforting → goldenhouramelie: sunshine and happiness
--------------
The house had gone completely quiet hours ago.
Not the artificial quietness of hotels or planes or paddocks where silence never really existed because there was always something humming behind the walls, but the heavy, deep stillness of home after everyone had fallen asleep. Mérida nights carried their own sounds if you listened carefully enough—the distant buzzing of insects outside the gardens, the occasional rustling of palm leaves moving with the warm midnight wind, pipes creaking softly somewhere inside the old family house that had existed long before any of them had grown into it. The air still smelled faintly like rain drifting through the open balcony doors mixed with the lingering scent of sunscreen and laundry detergent and the familiar warmth of the place she had spent her entire life returning to.
Amelie stared at the ceiling for what had to be the hundredth time that night.
Sleep simply refused to come.
Every time she closed her eyes, her mind circled right back to the conversation on the golf course, Adam’s careful voice replaying itself over and over again in a way that made her stomach twist tighter the longer she thought about it. Not because he had been cruel. God, he had been the complete opposite. Gentle. Kind. Thoughtful enough to choose every single word carefully so she wouldn’t feel cornered. Somehow that made it worse.
We miss him too sometimes.
The sentence had lodged itself somewhere beneath her ribs hours ago and refused to leave.
Beside her, Lando slept deeply for once, one arm stretched lazily across the mattress where she had been curled against him earlier, his breathing slow and even now after the long day. The moonlight slipping through the curtains painted pale silver lines across his bare shoulders and messy curls, softening every sharp edge of him until he looked younger somehow. Peaceful. Completely unaware that her brain had decided to spiral itself into exhaustion at nearly three in the morning.
Amelie let out a tiny breath through her nose before finally giving up.
The sheets slid quietly off her bare skin as she sat up slowly, careful not to wake him, the humid warmth of the room immediately wrapping around her body. Her muscles still ached pleasantly from earlier, the lazy exhaustion after sex lingering beneath her skin, but her mind remained painfully awake. She leaned over the edge of the bed to grab the first thing she could find on the floor—one of Lando’s shirts discarded somewhere beside the bed hours ago—and pulled it over her head, the soft fabric falling halfway down her thighs. A pair of panties disappeared from the open suitcase near the chair next, quickly tugged on before she padded silently toward the bedroom door.
Charlie somehow woke the second her hand touched the handle.
The puppy lifted his head immediately from his bed near the balcony with the dramatic alertness of someone convinced he had an important night shift to complete, tail thumping once against the floor before he stood and stretched lazily.
—You’re unbelievable,— she whispered softly at him.
Charlie only blinked at her before trotting after her anyway.
The downstairs lights remained off except for the soft glow above the stove in the kitchen, enough illumination to paint the marble counters gold against the darkness. The house felt enormous at this hour, empty hallways stretching quietly around her while she opened cabinets one after another searching for something sweet. Eventually her fingers closed around a package of Oreos shoved behind a cereal box, and she grabbed them with the quiet satisfaction of someone discovering treasure.
A few minutes later she had thrown herself dramatically across the living room couch, one leg tucked beneath her while Charlie climbed beside her immediately, proudly carrying one of his toys in his mouth like he was contributing emotionally to the situation.
Amelie absentmindedly scratched behind his ears while staring toward the dark windows.
Her thoughts kept moving in circles.
Had she really done that?
Had she unintentionally made Lando drift further from his family simply because he always followed her wherever she went?
The more she thought about it, the more examples appeared without permission. Holidays in Mexico. Random weekends in Mérida. Family dinners with Stella and Checo. Last-minute trips to see her mum. Lando almost never complained. If anything, he usually suggested staying longer. She had always taken it as love, as comfort, as him genuinely wanting to be there.
Maybe she had never stopped to think what his family felt watching him slowly build a second home somewhere else.
The front door suddenly opening downstairs made her jump so violently she nearly dropped the Oreos.
A startled yell echoed immediately afterward.
—Jesus Christ!—
Amelie blinked toward the hallway just as Jack appeared in the doorway looking equally terrified, one hand pressed dramatically against his chest while the other still held his car keys.
—You scared the shit out of me,— he breathed out.
—Sorry,— she murmured automatically.
Jack froze.
The apology alone clearly alarmed him more than the scare had.
His brows pulled together immediately as he slowly walked further into the living room, studying her carefully now beneath the dim lights. Charlie abandoned her without hesitation the second he saw him, jumping off the couch to greet Jack enthusiastically instead.
—Oh, okay. Cool,— Amelie muttered dryly at the dog. —Go betray me then.—
Jack barely reacted, still staring at her suspiciously while lowering himself beside her on the couch. Charlie immediately climbed halfway into his lap like he had found his true parent.
—What’s wrong?— Jack asked quietly.
—Nothing,— she answered too fast.
Jack reached into the Oreo package without breaking eye contact, taking one casually before shaking his head. —It’s definitely not nothing if you’re sitting here at three in the morning half naked eating Oreos like you just got divorced.—
Amelie snorted softly despite herself.
—Maybe I was just hungry,— she muttered while grabbing another cookie.
Jack only looked at her harder.
The silence stretched long enough that she finally sighed heavily through her nose, shoulders sinking slightly as the exhaustion she had been fighting all night started settling properly into her bones.
—Adam talked to me today,— she admitted quietly.
Jack stayed silent, waiting.
Her fingers turned the Oreo slowly between them while she stared somewhere toward the dark kitchen instead of at him. —Not in a bad way,— she clarified immediately. —He was actually really sweet about it. That’s kinda the problem.—
Jack frowned slightly.
Amelie swallowed once before continuing. —He basically told me that… they miss Lando sometimes. Like his family.— Her voice softened more with every word. —And that they don’t want me feeling like they’re just his side of life while we became his actual home.—
Jack leaned back slightly against the couch, listening carefully now.
Amelie let out another tired sigh. —I don’t know. It just made me realize maybe I’ve accidentally made him distance himself from everyone without noticing.—
The words hurt more once spoken out loud.
Jack stayed quiet for a few seconds before answering carefully. —Amelie… Lando’s a grown man.—
Jack’s voice stayed calm, grounded in the way older brothers somehow mastered without trying, his hand absentmindedly scratching behind Charlie’s ears while the puppy practically melted against him. The kitchen light cast soft shadows across the living room, painting everything gold and sleepy, and outside the open terrace doors the humid Mérida night carried the distant sound of cicadas somewhere deep in the gardens.
—He makes his own decisions,— Jack repeated more gently this time when she didn’t answer immediately. —You didn’t kidnap him and force him into moving countries or something dramatic like that.—
Amelie let out a tiny breathless laugh through her nose, though it faded almost instantly again.
Her fingers kept pulling apart the Oreo without really eating it, cream sticking slightly against her thumb while she stared down at it instead of at him. The oversized McLaren shirt swallowed most of her frame where she sat curled into the corner of the couch, hair messy from sleep and sex and anxiety, her entire posture carrying the kind of heaviness Jack recognized immediately.
Because for all the chaos Amelie usually carried around her like glitter and noise and movement, she only got this quiet when something was genuinely eating her alive.
—Maybe not,— she murmured softly. —But I think maybe I made it easy for him to stop noticing it too.—
Jack stayed quiet.
The silence invited honesty out of her in slow pieces.
—He follows me everywhere,— she admitted after another moment, her voice quieter now. —And I never really questioned it because… I don’t know. I loved having him there. It just felt natural. Like obviously he’d come spend holidays here or random weekends or stay extra days with us because he wanted to.— Her throat tightened slightly around the words. —But Adam made me realize maybe everyone else is watching him slowly disappear a little from their side too.—
Charlie shifted lazily against Jack’s chest while the older boy leaned back deeper into the couch cushions, thoughtful rather than dismissive.
—I mean… maybe a little,— he admitted honestly.
Amelie’s eyes finally lifted toward him.
Jack sighed softly before continuing carefully. —Not in some evil manipulative way, Meels. Relax.— His mouth twitched faintly. —But relationships do that sometimes. People start building their own little world and suddenly all their time goes there without them realizing it.—
Her chest tightened.
Because that sounded dangerously true.
Jack reached for another Oreo before speaking again, more serious now. —But it’s also not entirely your responsibility to manage his relationship with his family for him. He’s not sixteen. If he missed them that badly, he’d go more often.—
Amelie nodded slowly, though uncertainty still sat heavily behind her eyes.
The living room fell quiet again for a moment, the old ceiling fan spinning lazily above them while warm air drifted through the house. Somewhere upstairs a pipe creaked softly. Charlie let out a dramatic sleepy sigh like he personally carried the emotional burden of the conversation.
Jack glanced sideways toward her eventually, expression softer now. —I think maybe the important part is just… effort.—
She looked at him properly then.
He shrugged one shoulder lightly. —Lando’s made a huge effort with us. With mum. With Stella and the kids. With literally everybody here. He shows up. He stays involved. He tries.— Jack paused briefly. —Maybe Adam just wants to feel like you want the same thing with them too. Not because anyone’s angry at you. Just because they love him and they wanna feel like they matter in your life the same way your family matters in his.—
The words settled differently than Adam’s had earlier.
Softer somehow.
Simpler.
Amelie leaned her head back slowly against the couch cushions, staring up toward the ceiling while her mind turned over everything again. Because the worst part was that Adam had been right about one thing—she had unconsciously started separating the two worlds. Mexico was comfort. Home. Safety. The Norris family existed in another category in her brain entirely, tied to race weekends and quick visits and occasional holidays instead of permanence.
Meanwhile Lando had blended himself into her life so completely it felt impossible now to imagine her family without him sitting somewhere in the middle of it.
Her stomach twisted faintly.
—I love them,— she admitted quietly after a while. —That’s the thing. I actually really love his family.—
Jack smiled softly at that like he already knew.
—Then maybe show them that a little more,— he said simply.
Amelie stayed quiet.
Not because she disagreed.
Because she knew he was right.
The realization sat strangely inside her chest, tangled somewhere between guilt and something softer she didn’t quite know how to name yet. Because maybe part of her had unconsciously kept a slight distance out of fear too. Loving Lando’s family too much somehow made everything feel more permanent, more serious in a way that terrified her if she looked at it too directly.
Jack studied her for another second before nudging her lightly with his shoulder. —You know they already basically think you’re married into the family anyway, right?—
A startled laugh escaped her immediately.
—Please don’t start.—
—I’m serious,— he snorted. —Mum literally calls him her other son. You think the Norris family doesn’t already see you the same way?—
Amelie rolled her eyes, though warmth spread reluctantly through her chest anyway.
Jack smirked slightly before stealing another Oreo. —Honestly, the real issue here is that both of you are so obsessed with each other you forget other people exist sometimes.—
—That’s dramatic.—
Jack gave her a look.
Amelie opened her mouth to argue before immediately closing it again because… okay. Slightly true.
A quiet laugh finally escaped her, softer this time, genuine enough that some of the tension in her shoulders loosened for the first time all night. Charlie immediately abandoned Jack at the sound, climbing clumsily back across the couch toward her like emotional support had been reassigned again.
—Oh, now you come back,— she muttered, scratching behind his ears while he curled dramatically into her side.
Jack watched her carefully for another moment before his expression softened properly now. —You love him, Meels. Nobody doubts that. His family doesn’t either.— His voice lowered slightly. —But loving someone long term also means loving the people who made them sometimes. Even when life gets busy.—
The sentence settled heavily into the quiet room.
Not painful this time.
Just true.
Amelie stared down at Charlie while his tiny chest rose steadily against her stomach, her fingers moving absently through his fur while thoughts kept shifting slowly into place inside her head. The fear hadn’t disappeared completely, but it felt different now. Less like guilt clawing at her ribs and more like realization.
Maybe this wasn’t about choosing one family over another.
Maybe it was about finally letting herself believe she belonged to both.
Upstairs, faint footsteps creaked softly somewhere above them.
Jack’s brows lifted immediately. —That’s your boyfriend realizing his human heater disappeared,— he murmured dryly.
Right on cue, Lando’s sleepy voice echoed faintly from the second floor.
—Ames?—
Amelie closed her eyes briefly, unable to stop the smile pulling at her mouth.
Jack snorted under his breath while standing slowly from the couch. —Yeah. He sounds devastated.—
Another quieter call drifted downstairs.
—Baby?—
The exhaustion still sat heavy in her bones, but something inside her chest had softened now, loosened enough to breathe properly again. She pushed herself up slowly from the couch with Charlie immediately jumping down beside her, and Jack leaned down to kiss the top of her head quickly before heading toward the kitchen.
—Go save your man before he starts crying dramatically,— he teased lightly.
Amelie rolled her eyes affectionately before starting toward the stairs, Charlie trotting faithfully beside her this time.
Halfway up, Lando appeared at the top landing wearing nothing except sweatpants hanging low on his hips, curls sleep-messed and eyes barely open beneath the dim hallway lights. The second he spotted her, relief crossed his face so instantly it almost made her laugh.
—There you are,— he mumbled sleepily.
Her chest ached.
Because Adam had been right about one thing too.
Wherever she was had become home to him.
--------------
liked by moonlightvibes, dreamygirlie, and others
amelieupdates: spotted today 🤍🛍️ amelie out shopping in her hometown looking so happy and relaxed 😭 locals saying she was super sweet to everyone who came up to her
View all 248 comments
papayagirl: mother’s day and she’s home with her family 😭🤍 → loveroflan: actually so sweet → lanmeliehub: full circle moment
ameliecore: “super sweet to everyone” yeah that’s literally every fan encounter ever 😭 → goldenhouramelie: nobody says a bad thing about her
fanameliee: imagine casually seeing amelie dayman at the mall 😭 → cherryvibes: i’d forget how to breathe → dreamygirlie: instantly
sunsetamelie: she always looks happiest in mexico 🥹 → goldenhouramelie: home home → softclouds: comfort place fr
papayadreams: not me wondering if lando’s somewhere carrying shopping bags behind her 😭 → loveroflan: hidden boyfriend duties
amelievibes: hometown amelie content feels different idk → cherryvibes: softer somehow → dreamygirlie: exactly
fanpageamelie: locals saying she was sweet to everyone 🥹 → goldenhouramelie: famous AND kind
lanfan44: the way she went from met gala to random hometown shopping trip 😭 → papayaprincess: range queen → loveroflan: versatile icon
softamelie: i just know she bought flowers for her mom today 😭 → goldenhouramelie: STOP
ameliecentral: she really seems so grounded every time she goes home → cherryvibes: you can tell it means a lot to her → dreamygirlie: definitely
papayagirl: imagine asking her for a picture while buying shampoo 😭 → loveroflan: surreal experience → lanmeliehub: life changing
fanameliee: “looked happy and relaxed” WE LOVE TO SEE IT
sunsetamelie: not me zooming into every reflection for lando 😭 → cherryvibes: detective work never ends → dreamygirlie: literally never
coastallover: no because seeing celebrities in their hometown always humanizes them so much 😭 → velvetroses: exactly → midnightamelie: she looks so at peace there
goldenpapaya: “super sweet to everyone” meanwhile some celebs can’t even make eye contact 😭 → cherrysoda: amelie always beating the allegations
sunflowermelie: i know the aunties in mexico LOVE her 😭 → lovelane: absolutely obsessed with her probably → dreamersclub: national treasure fr
tracksidebabe: mother’s day shopping trip with the family sounds so wholesome 🥹
ameliezone: she really switches from met gala couture to hometown girl immediately 😭 → coastallover: range unmatched → softclouds: adaptable queen
papayaprincesss: i just know somebody’s mom asked for a picture 😭 → lanmeliefever: and she definitely said yes
velvetamelie: i need to know what she bought so bad 😭 → starrylan: candles probably → moonlightvibes: and iced coffee
gridgirlypop: somewhere in that mall lando is standing outside a fitting room holding bags 😭 → raceweekendd: boyfriend simulator
softpapaya: her being home for mother’s day makes me emotional idk → dreamersclub: family girl forever → lovelane: you can tell it matters to her
ameliehearts: imagine going to buy makeup and seeing amelie dayman casually walking around 😭
lan4worldchamp: i know locals were texting everybody after seeing her 😭 → paddockangel: “YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHO I JUST SAW” → softfilms: exactly 😭
midnightamelie: she really has this warmth about her lately 🥹 → velvetroses: happiness looks good on her → starrylan: genuinely glowing
f1fairytale: the way she always goes back home after huge career moments 😭 → moonlightvibes: keeps her grounded probably
--------------
The kitchen had slowly become the center of the house as the afternoon stretched lazily toward evening, sunlight pouring through the wide windows in warm golden rectangles that reflected softly against the pale marble counters and terracotta floors. Somewhere outside in the gardens, music drifted faintly from a speaker Elysia had forgotten to turn off earlier, blending with the distant sound of birds and the occasional laughter echoing from another part of the house. The entire place carried that comfortable chaos family homes always seemed to settle into during celebrations—half-finished flower arrangements on the dining table, someone’s sweater abandoned over a chair, the faint smell of spices and fresh tortillas lingering in the air from preparations already starting for dinner later that night.
Amelie sat cross-legged on one of the kitchen island stools with her laptop open in front of her, completely consumed by the twenty-seven tabs currently threatening to destroy her computer’s battery life. Greece. Southern Portugal. Mallorca. Ibiza. Sardinia. The Amalfi Coast. Every few minutes another beach appeared on her screen looking impossibly blue and offensively peaceful, and every time she thought she had decided, another villa or coastal town pulled her attention somewhere else entirely.
Benny sprawled dramatically beside the laptop like a furry paperweight, his massive British Shorthair body taking up nearly half the island counter while he repeatedly stretched one paw toward her keyboard in protest over being ignored. Every few minutes he would let out a tiny offended chirp when she failed to immediately acknowledge him, only to receive absolutely nothing in return besides absentminded scratches that lasted less than two seconds before her attention disappeared back into researching beachfront houses in Portugal.
Björn, meanwhile, had chosen violence.
The other cat sat beside her stool staring directly at the bowl of grapes in her hand with the intensity of someone plotting a robbery, letting out loud demanding meows every time she grabbed another one for herself without sharing. His tail flicked sharply against the floor in visible irritation, and every few seconds he would stand halfway up against her leg like persistence alone would somehow convince her grapes were an acceptable feline snack.
—You literally cannot eat grapes,— Amelie muttered distractedly without even looking down from the screen. —You’re being dramatic for no reason.—
Björn meowed louder immediately.
Benny finally lost patience entirely and shoved his entire head against her forearm with the force of a small truck.
Amelie barely reacted.
Her brows remained furrowed at the laptop screen while she clicked through another resort in southern Spain, chewing thoughtfully on another grape as she compared flight times between Monaco and different coastal towns. The entire thing had started as a vague idea sometime after her conversation with Jack at three in the morning, but somewhere between waking up and breakfast it had turned into something more solid. More intentional.
If she genuinely wanted to make an effort with Lando’s family, she couldn’t just think about it quietly and expect things to magically change on their own.
She had to actually show up.
The sound of footsteps entering the kitchen barely registered to her until a familiar voice cut through the room in immediate disapproval.
—Amelie Dayman, that cat is on the kitchen island again. Qué asco.—
Her attention finally snapped upward.
Her mother stood near the doorway holding an empty vase from somewhere else in the house, already walking toward the island with the exact expression mothers mastered after years of silently judging household behavior. Before Amelie could even answer, her mum had already scooped Benny up effortlessly into her arms like an oversized baby, the cat immediately melting against her chest with a smugness that felt deeply personal.
—Traitor,— Amelie muttered toward him.
Benny only blinked slowly, entirely unbothered.
—You encourage him too much,— her mother scolded lightly while scratching beneath Benny’s chin. —One day guests are going to come over and find cat hair inside the guacamole.—
—That sounds dramatic.—
—That sounds possible,— her mother corrected immediately.
Amelie snorted softly under her breath before returning her attention toward the laptop again, clicking absentmindedly through another rental listing while Björn continued his vocal campaign for grape rights beside her stool.
Her mother’s gaze drifted toward the screen after a second, curiosity softening her expression slightly as she adjusted Benny higher against her shoulder.
—Why are you looking at beaches in Europe?—
Amelie shrugged casually at first. —Just looking.—
Her mum hummed thoughtfully, eyes narrowing slightly the longer she looked at the collection of tabs open across the screen. Greece. Algarve. Marbella. Saint-Tropez.
A tiny knowing smile slowly appeared at the corner of her mouth.
—Does this have anything to do with you wanting to be more involved with Lando’s family?—
The question hit so directly Amelie physically turned toward her in surprise.
—How do you know about that?—
Her mother’s expression shifted immediately.
Just slightly.
But enough.
The tiny widening of her eyes lasted less than a second before she looked back down at Benny in her arms with sudden exaggerated focus, adjusting the cat against her chest while pretending she hadn’t accidentally exposed herself.
Amelie narrowed her eyes instantly.
—Mamá.—
—What?— her mother answered too quickly.
The suspicion on Amelie’s face only deepened. —You knew way too specifically what I was doing.—
Her mother pressed her lips together, already failing at hiding the amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth.
The realization hit almost immediately afterward.
Amelie groaned dramatically, dropping her head back toward the ceiling. —Oh my God. Jack cannot keep his mouth shut for more than six minutes.—
That finally made her mother laugh properly, warm and unapologetic while Benny purred loudly in complete betrayal against her chest.
—In his defense,— her mum started through a smile, —he was concerned about you.—
—He’s a snitch,— Amelie corrected flatly while closing the laptop halfway with a sigh. —This is exactly why I tell him nothing.—
—You tell him everything actually.—
—Unfortunately, yes.—
Her mother’s laughter softened into something more affectionate as she moved around the kitchen island slowly, still carrying Benny like a toddler while Björn immediately redirected his attention toward her instead, meowing loudly in hopes she would prove more generous with snacks.
She ignored him completely.
—Poor thing,— her mother murmured toward the cat. —No one feeds you in this house.—
Björn blinked slowly like a war veteran being finally understood.
Amelie rested both elbows against the marble counter before dragging one hand down her face tiredly. The tabs still glowed faintly across the laptop screen beside her, little pieces of Europe scattered everywhere in bright beaches and white villas and turquoise water, but now that someone else had noticed what she was doing, the entire thing suddenly felt strangely vulnerable.
Too intentional.
Too revealing.
Her mother leaned lightly against the opposite side of the island, studying her carefully now beneath the softness of the afternoon sunlight pouring through the kitchen windows. Years of motherhood had made her frighteningly observant, especially with Amelie, who somehow remained completely readable to her no matter how old she got or how carefully she tried hiding things.
—You’ve been thinking about it a lot?— she asked gently.
Amelie sighed softly through her nose before nodding once. —Adam talked to me yesterday at the golf tournament.—
Understanding immediately flickered across her mother’s face.
Not surprise.
Just understanding.
—Jack mentioned that too,— she admitted carefully.
Amelie groaned again. —Of course he did.—
Her mother’s smile softened immediately at the sound of her frustration, the kind of fond amusement only mothers seemed capable of carrying even while completely exposing family secrets. Benny remained fully relaxed in her arms, one paw dangling dramatically over her forearm while he purred loud enough to vibrate through the quiet kitchen.
—He worries about you,— she repeated gently, like that somehow excused betrayal.
Amelie narrowed her eyes. —You all gossip about me behind my back like old women in a bakery.—
—That is exactly what families do,— her mother replied without shame, reaching down absently to nudge Björn away from trying to climb her leg in search of grapes. —And honestly, if you’re going to walk around the house at three in the morning looking heartbroken, people are going to ask questions.—
Amelie let out a dramatic sigh, dropping her forehead briefly against the cool marble counter before turning her head slightly to look toward the windows. Outside, the late afternoon sun painted the gardens gold, palm leaves moving lazily in the heat while somewhere in the distance she could hear Stella’s children yelling over something near the pool. The house still smelled like lunch and flowers and home, warm and familiar in a way that usually settled her immediately.
Today her brain refused to fully relax.
Her fingers tapped lightly against the edge of the laptop while her mother continued studying her quietly from across the island.
—What exactly did Adam say?— her mum asked softly after a moment.
Amelie hesitated briefly before answering, not because she wanted to hide it anymore, but because saying it out loud again somehow made the entire thing feel heavier.
—Basically that they miss him sometimes,— she admitted quietly. —That he spends so much time with us now that maybe they feel a little… left behind, I guess.—
Her mother nodded slowly, thoughtful rather than defensive.
—And that upset you.—
It wasn’t really a question.
Amelie exhaled softly through her nose before nodding once. —Because I didn’t realize it was happening.— Her fingers curled loosely around one another atop the counter. —I think I just got used to him always being here. Like… he genuinely loves coming here and spending time with everyone and I never stopped to think maybe his family wanted that same version of him too.—
The honesty in her voice made something in her mother’s expression soften further.
She shifted Benny slightly higher against her chest before walking slowly around the island, stopping beside Amelie instead of across from her now. The marble remained cool beneath Amelie’s bare legs where she sat perched on the stool, sunlight warming one side of her face while the kitchen slowly filled with the softer orange tones of approaching evening.
—Amelie,— her mother murmured gently, one hand brushing slowly through her hair the way she had done since childhood. —You are not stealing him away from anyone.—
Amelie looked down at the counter quietly.
—But,— her mum continued carefully, choosing her words with the same softness Adam had used yesterday, —I do think maybe you got comfortable letting him come into your world without fully stepping into his.—
The words landed with uncomfortable accuracy.
Not cruel.
Just true.
Amelie swallowed softly.
Her mother leaned lightly against the counter beside her, gaze drifting toward the half-closed laptop screen where tiny pictures of European coastlines still glowed between browser tabs.
—Honestly, I think this is a good idea,— she admitted after a moment. —Making more effort with his family. Spending time with them outside race weekends and events and chaos.— A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. —Especially because Lando has made such a huge effort with ours from the beginning.—
Amelie let out the tiniest laugh through her nose. —Yeah. He basically lives here at this point.—
Her mother snorted softly. —That boy knows where everything is in this house better than your brothers do.—
Which was unfortunately true.
Lando moved around the Mérida house with the casual comfort of someone who belonged there entirely now. He knew where her mother kept coffee mugs. Which cabinet held extra towels. Which bedroom light flickered occasionally if you turned it on too quickly. He sat through loud family dinners without hesitation, helped her father with random projects around the house, carried Stella’s children around like they were permanently attached to him, and somehow blended himself into the rhythm of their family so naturally that everyone had stopped noticing when exactly it happened.
The realization made guilt twist faintly inside her chest again.
Because she loved his family too.
Genuinely.
But there was a difference between loving them and building herself into their lives the same way he had built himself into hers.
Her mother watched the thoughts move visibly across her face before speaking again, quieter this time.
—You know what I think?—
Amelie glanced toward her.
—I think you’ve spent a long time being scared of how serious this really is.—
The sentence hit directly enough that Amelie blinked.
Her mother smiled softly at her reaction, not mocking, only understanding.
—Not because you don’t love him. God, that part has been obvious for years now,— she said gently. —But because letting yourself become fully part of his life also means accepting he’s fully part of yours. And that’s terrifying when your lives are so chaotic all the time.—
Amelie looked away immediately toward the windows again because the accuracy of it made her chest ache.
The kitchen stayed quiet for a moment except for Benny purring lazily and Björn continuing his campaign of emotional manipulation beside the stools.
Eventually Amelie spoke more quietly. —I don’t want his family thinking I don’t care about them.—
Her mother’s expression softened instantly. —I promise you they don’t think that.—
—But Adam clearly feels something enough to bring it up.—
—Because he loves his son,— her mother replied gently. —And because families miss people when they become adults and start building lives somewhere else. That’s normal. One day I’ll probably complain about you disappearing too.—
Amelie laughed softly despite herself. —You already do that.—
—Exactly.—
The warmth of the conversation slowly eased some of the tightness sitting beneath her ribs, not erasing the worry completely but reshaping it into something more manageable. Something she could actually do something about instead of simply spiraling over at three in the morning.
Her mother glanced again toward the laptop before smiling slightly. —So. Which beach are we apparently relocating the Norris family to?—
Amelie groaned softly. —I can’t decide.—
That finally earned a full laugh from her mother as she carefully set Benny back onto the floor where he immediately strutted away with offended dignity after being removed from his throne.
—Well, if you’re going to kidnap your boyfriend’s family for bonding time, at least pick somewhere with good food,— she teased lightly.
Amelie smiled properly for the first time all afternoon before reopening the laptop slowly. Greece glowed back onto the screen first, white buildings against bright blue water, followed by another tab of the Algarve coastline.
Her mother leaned closer curiously.
—Portugal is nice,— she commented thoughtfully. —Closer for everyone too.—
Amelie nodded absentmindedly before hesitating briefly. —Do you think I should tell him? Like… about all this? About Adam talking to me and me wanting to make more effort?—
Her mother looked at her immediately like the answer should’ve been obvious.
—Of course you should tell him,— she said gently. —He’s your partner, mi amor. Don’t turn it into something secret living only inside your head.—
The statement felt painfully aimed considering that was exactly what she tended to do.
Amelie sighed softly. —I just don’t want him thinking his dad made me feel guilty or something.—
—Then explain it properly,— her mother replied simply. —Tell him the truth. That you love him. That you love his family too. That maybe you realized there’s room for you to show that more clearly.—
Outside the front gate, distant laughter and car doors suddenly echoed faintly through the afternoon air.
The boys were back from the store.
Almost immediately afterward Charlie’s barking exploded somewhere near the entrance of the house, followed by Lando’s voice loudly greeting someone in terrible Spanish while Jack laughed at him.
Amelie felt herself smile automatically before she could stop it.
Her mother noticed instantly.
—See?— she murmured softly. —That boy already belongs here. Maybe now it’s your turn to let yourself belong there too.—
--------------
liked by fanpageamelie, lovergirlie, and others
amelieupdates: victoria dayman just posted this family photo for mother’s day tonight 😭🤍 amelie back home in mexico with her parents and siblings, everyone say thank you victoria for feeding us!!!
View all 1,395 comments
papayagirl: THE WHOLE DAYMAN FAMILY 😭🤍 → loveroflan: victoria fed us well today → lanmeliehub: national holiday honestly
ameliecore: they genuinely look like the prettiest family ever 😭 → goldenhouramelie: genetics went crazy → softamelie: unreal
fanameliee: seeing amelie at home with her siblings makes me emotional idk 🥹 → cherryvibes: she looks so happy there
sunsetamelie: victoria posting family pics like a proud mom 😭 → goldenhouramelie: as she should → softclouds: sweetest thing ever
papayadreams: stella and amelie literally have the same smile 😭 → loveroflan: family genes STRONG
amelievibes: callum staying mysterious as always 😭 → cherryvibes: lowkey king → dreamygirlie: private legend
fanpageamelie: no because this is the same girl who was at the met gala days ago 😭 → goldenhouramelie: now she’s in family photos at home → softamelie: range
lanfan44: somewhere lando is definitely taking this photo 😭 → papayaprincess: WAIT 😭
softamelie: they genuinely look so close as a family 🥹 → goldenhouramelie: you can tell → sunsetamelie: warm vibes everywhere
ameliecentral: victoria said “here damn” and posted the whole family 😭 → cherryvibes: mother behavior
papayagirl: i know mexican moms LOVE posting family pics on mother’s day 😭 → loveroflan: universal experience → lanmeliehub: so real
fanameliee: jack looks exactly like their dad omg 😭
sunsetamelie: amelie always seems softer and calmer when she’s home 🥹 → goldenhouramelie: grounded queen → softclouds: hometown healing
amelieupdates: not me zooming in looking for lando in reflections again 😭 → papayaprincess: same → loveroflan: we never rest
coastallover: this family photo feels so nostalgic for some reason 🥹
goldenpapaya: victoria posting this like every proud mexican mom ever 😭 → cherrysoda: “my children 🤍” energy → lanmeliefever: i love it so much
sunflowermelie: the way amelie always comes back home after huge events 😭 → lovelane: keeps her grounded probably
tracksidebabe: all her siblings are gorgeous what the hell 😭 → lovergirlie: elite genetics → paddockangel: unfair honestly
ameliezone: no because you can SEE where amelie gets her smile from 🥹
papayaprincesss: family dinner at the dayman house must be so chaotic 😭 → lanmeliefever: imagine the stories → midnightvibes: i wanna witness it once
velvetamelie: stella and amelie together always heal me idk → starrylan: sister energy 🥹 → moonlightvibes: they seem so close
gridgirlypop: callum avoiding fame while having one of the most famous sisters alive 😭
softpapaya: victoria really said happy mother’s day to US too 😭 → dreamersclub: she knows what she’s doing → lovelane: absolutely
ameliehearts: i just know that house smells like good food and candles 😭 → cherrysoda: and coffee → papayahours: ultimate comfort home
lan4worldchamp: somewhere lando’s getting interrogated by the whole family 😭
midnightamelie: the fact she can go from global superstar to just being somebody’s daughter at home 🥹 → velvetroses: this one hurt → starrylan: beautifully said
f1fairytale: family photos on mother’s day will always make me emotional 😭
goldenhourlane: not me hoping victoria accidentally posts lando next 😭 → lovergirlie: manifestation circle → paddocklove: patience everyone
--------------
The bedroom had settled into that soft, heavy quiet that only seemed to exist after midnight, after exhaustion and intimacy had finally wrung the last bit of noise out of the world. The balcony doors remained cracked open just enough for the warm air to drift lazily inside, carrying the distant sound of insects and rustling trees from the gardens below, the entire family house wrapped in darkness now except for the faint amber light glowing from the bedside lamp neither of them had bothered turning off. The sheets lay tangled low around their waists, twisted carelessly from earlier, the air still warm with the lingering heat of skin against skin and slow breaths and the aftermath of each other.
Amelie rested sprawled across Lando’s chest with one leg tangled loosely between his, her cheek pressed just above his heartbeat while his fingers moved absentmindedly through her hair in slow repetitive motions that had become almost unconscious by now. Every few seconds his hand would catch slightly on the ends before smoothing through again, nails scratching lightly against her scalp in a way that made her eyelids feel heavy despite the fact her brain still refused to properly settle. Beneath her, his breathing remained calm and deep now, chest rising steadily underneath her body while the occasional movement of his thumb traced lazy circles against her shoulder.
Neither of them had spoken for several minutes.
Not because anything was wrong.
Quite the opposite.
The silence between them had become one of the safest places she knew.
Charlie slept somewhere near the balcony in complete dramatic exhaustion after spending most of the evening running through the gardens with Callum and Jack, his tiny snores occasionally blending into the soft night sounds outside. The entire room smelled faintly like clean sheets and the remnants of Lando’s cologne still lingering against his skin, comforting in a way that made her chest ache slightly the longer she stayed there listening to his heartbeat.
Amelie stared quietly toward the ceiling for another minute before finally speaking, her voice softer than the darkness around them.
—Do you miss your family?—
Lando’s fingers slowed slightly in her hair.
Not stopping.
Just slowing enough that she felt the small flicker of confusion move through him beneath her.
—What?— he asked quietly, his voice rough with sleep and relaxation.
Amelie lifted her chin slightly from his chest just enough to look vaguely toward him without fully moving. —Your family,— she repeated softer now, suddenly feeling strangely shy about the question the second it left her mouth. —Do you miss them?—
A tiny crease appeared between Lando’s brows as he looked down at her properly now, confusion mixing with amusement like he was trying to understand where this had possibly come from in the middle of post-sex silence.
—Well… yeah,— he answered slowly. —Of course I do.—
The response came naturally.
Without hesitation.
Like the answer was obvious.
Amelie nodded once against his chest.
Silence slipped back over them afterward, though it felt different now. Fuller somehow. Lando’s hand continued drifting through her hair while his eyes stayed fixed on the top of her head, his confusion growing quietly the longer she remained silent afterward.
Outside, the wind shifted softly through the palm trees.
Somewhere downstairs, pipes creaked faintly inside the old house.
Lando eventually let out the tiniest breath through his nose before tilting his head slightly against the pillow beneath him. —Why?— he asked gently.
Amelie swallowed once.
Her fingers curled absentmindedly against his stomach beneath the sheets while she searched for the right way to say it without sounding strange, without exposing the spiral that had lived inside her head for nearly two days now.
—No reason,— she started automatically.
Lando immediately snorted softly.
The sound made her smile despite herself.
—That’s definitely a lie.—
She groaned quietly into his chest. —Okay, fine.—
His hand slipped lower through her hair now, fingertips brushing slowly against the back of her neck while he waited patiently.
Amelie stayed quiet another second before finally lifting herself slightly onto her forearms so she could look at him properly. The warm bedside light softened every feature of his face beneath her, curls messy against the pillows, lips still pink from kissing her, eyes heavy with sleep but focused completely on her now in that attentive way he always did when he realized something mattered to her more than she was pretending.
Her chest tightened slightly at the sight of him.
—We spend a lot of time with my family,— she admitted carefully.
Lando blinked once. —Okay…—
—No, like… a lot,— she continued softer now. —We’re always here or with Stella and Checo or doing something with everyone and... I don’t know. I just started thinking maybe we don’t really do the same with yours.—
His expression shifted subtly.
The confusion faded first.
Something gentler replaced it instead.
Amelie looked briefly down at his chest before continuing. —I feel like you’re always the one coming into my world all the time. My house. My family. My traditions. My chaos.— A tiny embarrassed laugh escaped her quietly. —And you never complain about it. You always make the effort. But I don’t know if I do the same enough for you sometimes.—
Lando’s hand stilled completely in her hair now.
Not tense.
Just attentive.
Amelie rushed slightly to keep talking before she lost the nerve entirely. —I was looking at places in Europe earlier today,— she admitted. —Maybe we could do something with your family next week or whenever everyone’s free. Somewhere by the beach or something. Portugal maybe. Or Greece. I don’t know.— Her fingers traced nervously against his chest now. —I just think maybe we should do that more. Be around them more. Not only mine.—
The room stayed quiet after she finished.
Not empty.
Just still.
Lando looked up at her for several seconds without speaking, something unreadable flickering softly behind his eyes while he processed every word. His thumb eventually brushed lightly against the back of her neck again before he let out the smallest breath through his nose, almost disbelieving.
—Baby,— he murmured quietly.
The softness in his voice alone made her stomach twist.
Amelie immediately looked defensive despite herself. —What?—
Lando’s mouth curved immediately at the way she said it, soft and defensive all at once, like she was already preparing herself for him to tell her she was overthinking something again. His hand slid slowly from the back of her neck into her hair once more, fingers combing lazily through the strands while he looked up at her with an expression that only made her feel more exposed somehow, too warm and too affectionate for the hour of the night they were in.
—Nothing,— he murmured quietly. —You’re just… very cute when you spiral yourself into guilt over things that literally don’t exist.—
Amelie frowned instantly. —I’m not spiraling.—
Lando’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
She narrowed her eyes at him. —Don’t do that face.—
—What face?—
—That face where you act like I’m being dramatic when I’m actually making valid points.—
A quiet laugh escaped him beneath his breath, his chest moving underneath her where she rested against him. The sound carried no mockery in it, only softness, only the familiar amusement he always seemed to have whenever she started trying to carry emotional responsibility for the entire world on her shoulders.
Lando’s laugh faded slowly into the quiet room, softer now, his fingers still moving through her hair with the kind of absent tenderness that made it impossible for her to stay properly annoyed at him for long. The warm light beside the bed painted lazy shadows across his face, catching against the curve of his mouth while he looked at her like she had just said something impossibly precious instead of exposing one of the newest anxieties currently eating holes through her brain.
Amelie narrowed her eyes at him for another second before finally sighing dramatically and letting her forehead fall back against his chest. —You’re annoying,— she muttered.
His hand immediately slid lower along her spine beneath the sheets, slow and soothing. —And you’re overthinking again.—
—I’m literally not.—
—Baby, you researched entire countries today.—
That made her lift her head immediately again. —Okay first of all, Greece was actually very valid research.—
Lando grinned properly now, sleepy amusement brightening his face. —Mmhm.—
—And Portugal too,— she continued defensively. —You like Portugal.—
—I do like Portugal.—
—Exactly.—
His smile only softened further watching her argue her own point so seriously, curls messy against the pillows while she hovered half on top of him beneath the tangled sheets. God, she was beautiful like this. Barefaced. Hair ruined from his hands. Lips swollen from kissing him. Looking deeply offended because he had correctly identified she was spiraling emotionally again.
The realization that she had spent her entire afternoon planning ways to be closer to his family hit him all over again somewhere deep in his chest.
Not because he expected it from her.
Because he didn’t.
That was the thing.
Everything she gave people always came naturally. Fiercely. Completely. She loved with her whole body. His family had adored her almost immediately because of it, because she walked into rooms like warmth itself, because she made people feel chosen without even realizing she was doing it. The fact she was now sitting here worried she somehow wasn’t doing enough almost made him emotional in a way he would absolutely deny later.
His thumb brushed softly against the curve of her waist beneath the sheets. —You know my family loves you, right?—
Amelie’s expression softened slightly. —I know.—
—Like… genuinely loves you.—
A tiny smile pulled at her mouth. —I love them too.—
The answer came so quietly and honestly it made something ache inside him.
Lando tilted his head slightly against the pillow while looking up at her, his hand drifting slowly up and down her back now. —You don’t have to prove anything to them,— he murmured. —Or to me.—
Her gaze dropped briefly to his chest again, fingers tracing absentminded little shapes against his skin. —I know that too.—
Silence settled softly between them once more, comfortable and warm beneath the distant sound of wind outside the balcony doors. Somewhere beyond the room the old house creaked quietly in its sleep, the entire world reduced down to amber light and tangled sheets and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath her cheek.
Amelie swallowed softly before speaking again, quieter this time. —I just don’t want you waking up one day realizing your whole life became mine by accident.—
The words hit him harder than she probably intended.
Lando’s brows pulled together faintly, not in irritation but confusion almost, genuine disbelief that she could think that way at all. His hand slipped gently into her hair again, fingertips curling softly at the nape of her neck until she looked back up at him.
—Amelie,— he murmured carefully. —My life didn’t become yours by accident.—
Her chest tightened immediately.
His eyes stayed fixed on hers, open and honest in that terrifying way only he could manage when he meant something completely.
—You became my life because I wanted you to,— he said softly.
The room suddenly felt smaller somehow.
Warmer.
Amelie’s breath caught embarrassingly for a second while she looked at him.
Lando gave the tiniest shrug afterward, like the statement was the most obvious thing in the world. —I come here all the time because I love being here. I love your family. I love your home. I love seeing you happy when you’re around them.— His thumb brushed gently beneath her jaw now. —Nobody’s forcing me to do any of that.—
She felt her throat tighten slightly.
—But,— he continued softer, —if you wanna spend more time with my family too… I’d love that.—
A tiny smile finally tugged properly at her mouth now.
—Yeah?—
—Yeah.— His own smile widened slightly. —Although fair warning, my family is significantly less chaotic than yours. You might get bored.—
Amelie gasped softly in offense. —Excuse you, my family is charming.—
—Your brother once tried to cook bacon shirtless at two in the morning and almost set the kitchen on fire.—
—Okay but in his defense he was drunk.—
Lando snorted quietly. —Exactly my point.—
She laughed then, the sound softer now than before, less tense, her body finally relaxing properly against him again. Lando watched her carefully while she settled back onto his chest, one of her legs tangling more fully between his beneath the sheets as his arms wrapped automatically around her waist.
His mouth pressed absentmindedly against the top of her head.
—Portugal could be nice though,— he murmured into her hair after a minute.
Amelie smiled against his skin immediately. —I knew you’d say Portugal.—
—Because it’s nice.—
—Because you wanna golf there.—
He looked mildly offended. —That’s not true.—
She lifted her head just enough to give him a look.
Lando paused. —Okay maybe slightly true.—
Amelie rolled her eyes fondly before leaning down to kiss him softly, slow and warm and lingering in the quiet room. He kissed her back immediately, one hand sliding higher along her spine while the other cradled lazily behind her neck, both of them smiling faintly into it by the end.
The kiss broke slowly, neither moving far.
Their noses still brushed together when he spoke again.
Please write a chapter about Amelie goes to the Met Gala and maybe Lando goes with her?🥺💗 and they meet with Lewis? And Hailey and Amelie moments at the gala😍
paper rings
Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman
Summary: After surviving a chaotic trip from Miami to New York, Amelie and Lando attend the Met Gala together, where their playful interview, quiet intimacy, and obvious love for each other quickly become fan favorites online
Wordcount: 13.3 k
Warnings: none
full masterlist // request over here!
April 4th, 2026 - Miami, FL
liked by maxverstappen1, pietra.pilao, and others
ameliedayman: making mclaren my whole personality so lando pays for my tacos
View all 3,018 comments
lando: tacos secured 😭🌮 → ameliedayman: as they should be → maxfewtrell: expensive tacos btw
lando: charlie kinda stole the weekend from us → ameliedayman: deserved honestly → fanameliee: HIS LITTLE FACE 😭
emmachamberlain: charlie on the table 😭😭😭 → ameliedayman: he was exhausted → fanameliee: same honestly
fanameliee: THE HAND HOLDING PIC I’M SICK 😭 → goldenhouramelie: they look so happy → softamelie: glowing
ameliecore: “so lando pays for my tacos” 😭😭😭 → cherryvibes: valid reason
stelladayman: orange is VERY your color btw → ameliedayman: noted ✍️
carmenmmundt: the pink dress hello??? → ameliedayman: she had her moment
schecoperez: i respect the grind for free tacos → ameliedayman: finally someone understands me
papayagirl: charlie having paddock access before me hurts → loveroflan: little VIP → lanmeliehub: tiny king
sunsetamelie: the trophy pic omg 🥹
elysiadayman: the lego keychain close up 😭 → ameliedayman: my emotional support accessory → fanpageamelie: cutest thing ever
lanfan44: yeah no he’s smiling HARD in every pic → papayaprincess: happiest man alive → loveroflan: genuinely glowing
fanpageamelie: the lego keychain detail i’m gonna cry 😭 → cherryvibes: she’s down BAD
alex_albon: charlie looked very comfortable in hospitality → ameliedayman: basically works there now → lilymhe: employee of the month
georgerussell63: nice trophy → lando: thanks mate
ameliecentral: she really became a full mclaren girl → goldenhouramelie: orange army → softamelie: fully converted
gridgirlie: the paddock hand holding pic looks like a movie still → f1tea: cinematic
softamelie: charlie on the chair with his face on the table 😭 → goldenhouramelie: he’s just a baby → sunsetamelie: exhausted employee
lanmeliecentral: he got P2 AND a girlfriend wearing orange all weekend → papayaprincess: winning → loveroflan: successful weekend
amelievibes: these pics feel so warm and happy 🥹 → cherryvibes: comfort post
rebeccadonaldson: charlie in hospitality 😭💗 → ameliedayman: he loves race weekends → carmenmmundt: little paddock baby
kellypiquet: the orange dress is everything ✨ → ameliedayman: thank you angel 🥹 → lilymhe: seriously unreal
kikagomes: okay miss mclaren 😭🧡 → ameliedayman: caught me → kikagomes: officially recruited
fanameliee: the way she looks at him 😭 → goldenhouramelie: so in love → softamelie: painfully obvious
papayagirl: not the lego keychain making another appearance → loveroflan: emotional support keychain
alexandramalenaleclerc: the pink dresssssss → ameliedayman: she deserved miami
estebanocon: charlie looked happier than everyone else there → lando: honestly true → ameliedayman: he had the best weekend
ameliecore: she said “our trophy” btw 😭 → cherryvibes: I SAW THAT → dreamygirlie: married behavior
sunsetamelie: the pic of them in the stands feels so intimate 🥹 → goldenhouramelie: comfort energy → softclouds: home
lanfan44: miami might’ve been his happiest race weekend ever 😭 → papayaprincess: look at his FACE
maxverstappen1: didn’t know trophies could be shared now → lando: depends who asks → ameliedayman: exactly
oscarpiastri: charlie seems comfortable in the team hospitality → lando: he pays rent now
fanpageamelie: charlie casually living the paddock life now 😭 → cherryvibes: frequent flyer → dreamygirlie: little mascot
amelievibes: this whole dump feels like sunshine → goldenhouramelie: exactly
lanmeliezone: the fact she flew from ending tour straight into race girlfriend mode 😭 → papayaprincess: range → loveroflan: versatile queen
coastallover: these pics genuinely look like they had the best weekend ever
softamelie: “making mclaren my whole personality” already happened btw → goldenhouramelie: long ago → sunsetamelie: fully orange now
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The suite felt strangely quiet compared to the chaos they had left behind at the circuit, the soft hum of the air conditioning and the distant sound of rain against the windows replacing the endless noise of engines, radios, cameras, and voices that had followed them all day. Miami glittered outside the floor-to-ceiling glass in blurred streaks of gold and white through the storm, the city softened by the heavy rain still pouring relentlessly over everything, thunder rumbling faintly somewhere far enough away to feel more atmospheric than threatening. Their dinner sat half-finished on the table near the living area, room service plates pushed around more than eaten, the exhaustion hanging over both of them too heavily for either to care much about food anymore. Midnight had long passed, and somewhere between dessert arriving untouched and the fifth weather update from the team, they had finally accepted they were stranded in Miami for the night instead of flying to New York for the Met Gala preparations like planned.
The hotel room door clicked shut behind them after one final check from security downstairs, and the second it did, the little bit of composure Amelie had watched Lando force himself through all evening seemed to slip further out of his grasp. She barely had time to crouch near the entrance and unclip Charlie from his leash before the dog exploded into motion, sprinting across the suite in excited circles with the kind of endless energy only he could still possess at this hour, nails skidding briefly against the hardwood floors before disappearing toward the bedroom area. A soft laugh almost escaped her instinctively at the sight, but it faded before it fully formed as her attention shifted back toward Lando.
He didn’t even make it all the way to the couch properly.
His body practically collapsed into it, one arm thrown over the backrest, the other hanging uselessly at his side as he let his head fall backward against the cushions, eyes fixed blankly on the ceiling like he didn’t have enough left in him to focus on anything else. The black McLaren team shirt he had changed into after the race sat wrinkled against him now, damp slightly at the collar from the rain outside, his curls messy from hours of running frustrated hands through them. There was something devastatingly tired about him like this, not just physically exhausted but hollowed out in a way she recognized immediately, the kind of quiet that only came when he was trying too hard to keep everything inside.
Amelie slowly stood from where she had crouched by the door, smoothing her palms nervously against the orange fabric of her dress more out of habit than necessity, the satin cool beneath her fingers as she hesitated for half a second, watching him from across the room. She knew this version of him by now. The one that withdrew into himself after races like this, after missed wins, after strategy calls that spiraled into frustration he couldn’t control. Most of the time he tried to deal with it alone, tried to shove it somewhere deep enough that nobody would notice how badly it got to him, but tonight there was something heavier sitting on his shoulders, something more fragile underneath the frustration.
Her steps stayed quiet against the carpet as she crossed the suite toward him, Charlie already circling back now, slowing near the couch before hopping onto the rug nearby with a satisfied sigh. Lando barely moved when she approached, only blinking slowly as her shadow fell across him, his expression still distant, still stuck somewhere back at the circuit.
Without a word, she lowered herself carefully onto the couch beside his head, turning slightly so her legs tucked underneath her, and gently reached for him. Her fingers slid into his curls at the nape of his neck first, soft and grounding, and she felt the faintest tension leave him immediately at the touch alone. Slowly, carefully, she guided him upward just enough for her to shift beneath him, letting his head settle onto her lap as naturally as breathing, like they had done this a hundred times before.
He let her.
No resistance.
No teasing comment.
Just a quiet exhale through his nose as he finally relaxed into her, one arm moving automatically across his stomach while her fingers threaded slowly through his hair, scratching lightly against his scalp in the way she knew soothed him most. The city lights flickered dimly across the room around them, rain tapping steadily against the windows while she looked down at him, studying the exhaustion written all over his face now that he wasn’t trying to hide it.
—What’s going on in there?— she asked softly after a moment, her voice barely louder than the rain, gentle enough that it didn’t feel like pressure, only an invitation.
For a second he didn’t answer.
His eyes stayed fixed somewhere distant before he finally let out a long, heavy sigh, both hands coming up to drag over his face slowly like he was trying to physically wipe the frustration off himself. The movement lingered there for a moment, palms pressed against his eyes, and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded rougher than usual, quieter too.
—I don’t know how I’m supposed to defend a championship like this,— he admitted finally, the words leaving him in a tired rush like they had been sitting in his chest for hours waiting for somewhere safe enough to land, his hands sliding slowly down from his face before dropping against his stomach again. His gaze stayed fixed upward, not really looking at the ceiling anymore, more like he was staring through it, somewhere far beyond the suite, beyond Miami, beyond tonight entirely. —Every weekend it feels like something else goes wrong. A pit stop, strategy, timing, whatever the fuck it is. And everyone just acts like it’s normal.—
Amelie’s fingers slowed slightly in his hair, not stopping, just softening as she listened, her other hand resting lightly against his shoulder, grounding him there against her lap while the storm carried on outside. She didn’t interrupt him, didn’t rush to fill the silence with reassurance too quickly because she knew he hated that sometimes, hated when people tried to smooth over things that actually hurt.
His jaw tightened faintly before he let out another frustrated breath.
—Kimi deserved the win, obviously,— he continued quietly, the honesty automatic even through the frustration because that was who he was, because he would never pretend otherwise. —He drove well. But we should’ve had that race. We had the pace. I had it under control and then one bad call and suddenly I’m stuck trying to recover again while everyone else gets to capitalize on our mistakes.— His mouth pressed into a thin line for a second before he shook his head slightly against her lap, frustrated more at himself now for even sounding this affected. —And the worst part is I can already hear people talking about consistency and pressure and whether I’m actually capable of defending it like last year was some fluke.—
The last part came out quieter.
Smaller.
Like admitting it aloud made it more real than he wanted it to be.
Amelie looked down at him carefully, her chest tightening at the vulnerability in his voice more than the words themselves. Publicly, Lando always carried disappointment differently than most drivers. He joked through it, shrugged things off, redirected attention, turned frustration into sarcasm before anyone could look too closely. People saw the easy smile and assumed losses rolled off him easier than they actually did. They never saw this part. The quiet aftermath. The spiraling thoughts at midnight after the cameras disappeared.
Her fingers moved gently through his curls again, slower this time, nails lightly scratching against his scalp the way she knew calmed him when his thoughts started running too fast.
—You know what I think?— she asked softly after a moment, her voice careful, measured.
His eyes shifted upward slightly toward her without fully lifting his head, exhausted and unconvinced already.
A tiny breath left her nose before she continued anyway.
—I think you’ve spent so long proving yourself to people that now the second something goes wrong, you immediately think everyone’s waiting for you to fail again,— she murmured, her gaze staying on him, steady and warm. —But that’s not actually what’s happening, Lan. One bad strategy call doesn’t erase the fact that you’re still leading a championship fight because you’re good enough to be there in the first place.—
His expression barely shifted, but she felt the way his shoulders loosened just slightly underneath her hand anyway.
—It’s not one bad strategy call,— he muttered quietly, frustration threading back through his voice immediately. —It keeps happening. And every point matters now. Every mistake matters. I can’t just… smile through it forever while everyone keeps fucking up around me.—
The honesty of it sat heavy between them.
Not angry.
Just tired.
So deeply tired.
Amelie swallowed softly, knowing there wasn’t some perfect thing she could say to fix the feeling sitting inside him, no magical reassurance that would suddenly make the pressure disappear. Formula 1 didn’t work like that. Championships definitely didn’t. Still, she shifted slightly against the couch, one hand leaving his hair just long enough to brush gently across his cheek before resting there.
—You don’t have to smile through it with me,— she said quietly.
That got his attention more than anything else had.
His eyes finally lifted properly toward hers, tired and heavy and vulnerable in a way he only ever allowed in private, the tension in his face softening just slightly as she held his gaze.
—You’re allowed to be angry. Or scared. Or frustrated. You care about this more than anyone I know,— she continued softly. —And yeah, maybe the team messed up today. Maybe they’ve messed up before. But none of that changes who you are in the car. None of it changes the fact that you’re still one of the best drivers on that grid even when everything around you feels messy.—
A quiet silence settled after that, softer now, less suffocating than before.
Lando stared at her for a long second like he was trying to decide whether he believed her or just wanted to because it was her saying it. Slowly, his head turned slightly into her hand where it rested against his cheek, not even consciously, just instinctively seeking the warmth there.
—I hate how much this affects me sometimes,— he admitted eventually, almost embarrassed by it, his voice quieter now. —Like logically I know it’s one race. But it doesn’t feel like one race when you’re in it. It feels like everything.—
Amelie’s expression softened instantly at that.
Because she understood that feeling more than he realized.
Not Formula 1 specifically, not strategy calls or pit windows, but the crushing weight of living inside something people consumed publicly, the way one bad night could suddenly feel career-defining even when everyone else insisted it wasn’t.
Her thumb brushed slowly beneath his eye.
—That’s because you care,— she whispered simply. —And honestly? I think I’d be more worried if you didn’t.—
A small breath escaped him then, almost a laugh but not quite, the tension around his mouth easing faintly for the first time since they’d gotten back to the hotel. His eyes slipped shut again as she continued playing with his hair, quieter now, calmer, the storm outside filling the spaces between them while Charlie wandered back over and curled up near the couch like even he could sense the heaviness in the room easing slightly.
For a while neither of them spoke again.
They didn’t need to.
Lando stayed there with his head in her lap, no walls left up anymore, no pretending he was fine for the sake of anyone else, just exhausted and disappointed and human in a way very few people ever got to see. And Amelie held him through all of it without trying to solve him, without trying to make the pressure disappear, simply giving him somewhere safe enough to let it exist without carrying it alone.
--------------
liked by maxverstappen1, pietra.pilao, and others
lanmelieupdates: lando and amelie spotted having breakfast together in miami this morning 😭☕️🤍
View all 424 comments
papayagirl: THE CHEEK KISS 😭😭😭 → loveroflan: i’m unwell → lanmeliehub: too soft for me
ameliecore: wait… HE SHAVED 👀 → goldenhouramelie: EXACTLY → softamelie: met gala alarm bells
fanameliee: yeah no they’re definitely still going to the met → cherryvibes: that shave confirmed it
sunsetamelie: they look so domestic i can’t 😭☕️ → goldenhouramelie: just breakfast and being in love → softclouds: painful honestly
lanfan44: imagine casually getting breakfast and seeing THEM → papayaprincess: i’d faint → loveroflan: immediately
ameliecentral: the way she’s wrapped around his shoulders 🥹 → cherryvibes: comfort people
papayadreams: what were they smiling at on his phone 🤨 → loveroflan: memes probably → lanmeliehub: or pics of charlie 😭
fanpageamelie: the shave means SOMETHING idc
lanmeliezone: maybe they missed the flight because of weather and are flying later 👀 → papayaprincess: that’s my theory too → loveroflan: i refuse to lose hope
amelievibes: they genuinely look so happy lately 🥹 → cherryvibes: glowing
f1girlie: imagine they just skip the met to stay in miami together 😭 → gridwatcher: honestly iconic → f1tea: respect
softamelie: no because him shaving right after race weekend is suspicious → goldenhouramelie: exactly → sunsetamelie: he planned something
fanameliee: breakfast date before serving at the met would be elite behavior → cherryvibes: manifestation circle
lanfanclub: yeah no he looks TOO happy for someone allegedly stuck in miami → papayaprincess: exactly 😭 → loveroflan: suspiciously happy
amelieupdates: the kiss on the cheek pic feels straight out of pinterest
papayagirl: if they show up at the met tonight i’ll scream → loveroflan: same → lanmeliehub: collectively
sunsetamelie: they really turned a delayed flight into a date 😭 → cherryvibes: making the best of it
amelievibes: no because the shave genuinely changed the trajectory of my day 😭 → goldenhouramelie: SAME → softclouds: met gala panic mode
papayadreams: imagine they’re just chilling while the internet loses its mind over a razor → cherryvibes: exactly 😭
fanameliee: the little smile while she kisses his cheek 😭 → softamelie: he looks so gone → sunsetamelie: completely in love
lanfan44: if they skipped the met honestly i respect it
sunsetamelie: they look SO relaxed together lately 🥹 → goldenhouramelie: comfort level 100 → softclouds: home energy
ameliecentral: not us turning into FBI agents because he shaved → cherryvibes: we have no choice
lanmeliezone: what if dior is styling them both 👀 → papayaprincess: STOP → loveroflan: i’d pass away
coastallover: the wrapped around his shoulders pic is literally romance movie behavior → cherryvibes: airport romcom vibes
fanpageamelie: delayed flight but make it adorable 😭 → goldenhouramelie: silver lining → softamelie: cutest ever
papayagirl: imagine they board a flight last minute and suddenly appear at the met → loveroflan: cinematic entrance
ameliecore: they smile at each other like they know a secret 😭
lanfanclub: yeah no he definitely shaved because she told him to 😭 → papayaprincess: boyfriend behavior → loveroflan: absolutely
softamelie: breakfast date after race weekend sounds so intimate idk → goldenhouramelie: little moments matter → sunsetamelie: exactly this
fanameliee: if they don’t go to the met at least we got THIS content 😭 → cherryvibes: true
amelieupdates: the weather delay accidentally gave us the cutest pics ever → goldenhouramelie: blessing in disguise → softamelie: genuinely
gridgirlie: i just know the people around them were trying not to stare 😭 → f1tea: impossible task
--------------
Lando genuinely didn’t know how the day had moved this fast.
One minute they had been downstairs in the Miami hotel restaurant, both of them half-awake over coffee and fruit neither of them really wanted, the storm still raging outside the windows while the team tried to figure out whether flights were even possible, and the next thing he knew they were being rushed through a private terminal with three different schedules being rewritten in real time because apparently the universe had decided they weren’t stressed enough already. He had spent most of the drive to the airport thinking maybe—just maybe—the delayed flight would at least give him a few quiet hours to shut his brain off before the insanity waiting for them in New York, before fittings and cameras and interviews and the Met Gala chaos neither of them had actually slept enough for.
Of course none of that happened.
Because things around them rarely ever went the easy way.
By the time they finally boarded near midday instead of the previous night, the private jet already looked less like transportation and more like a moving backstage area, garment bags hanging carefully from every available hook, makeup cases spread across counters, steaming devices hissing softly in corners while assistants moved around with the kind of controlled panic that came from being catastrophically late on a schedule nobody could afford to miss. The second they stepped on board, they had practically been separated without discussion.
Lando had ended up trapped in the front section while stylists fixed his hair and argued quietly over jackets and accessories, the exhaustion from Miami still sitting behind his eyes while someone tugged gently at his curls for what felt like the millionth time that weekend. Somewhere further back in the cabin he could hear Amelie’s laugh drifting faintly between the noise, mixed with Meredith’s voice and Jared reminding someone not to wrinkle fabric that probably cost more than his first kart.
By the time the last person finally stepped back from him with an approving nod, his patience had completely evaporated.
—Perfect,— one of them announced brightly, like they hadn’t all been awake for nearly twenty-four hours straight.
Lando only managed a tired hum in response before standing slowly from the chair, rubbing one hand down his face as he muttered a quiet thanks that sounded more exhausted than polite. His shoulders ached. His brain felt heavy. The idea of stepping into another room full of people somehow already felt impossible.
The cabin shifted slightly beneath his feet as he moved down the narrow aisle toward the back section, loosening the collar of his shirt absentmindedly while voices grew louder the closer he got. The private room door near the rear of the jet stood half-open, and Amelie sat closest to it, one leg crossed carefully over the other while someone worked meticulously on her nails, tiny bottles and tools spread across the table beside her.
She looked up immediately when he approached.
Even tired, even surrounded by chaos, her face softened the second she saw him.
Lando’s hand brushed automatically against her shoulder as he passed behind her chair, fingers squeezing gently for just a second, and she tilted her head up toward him with that same soft smile that somehow always managed to make something unclench inside his chest no matter how exhausted he was.
He leaned down instinctively, pressing a quick kiss against her lips, slow enough to linger for a second before pulling back.
—You alright?— she asked quietly, studying him immediately in that way she always did, like she could tell the difference between tired and something heavier without him needing to explain it.
He nodded once.
—Yeah,— he murmured softly. —Just gonna grab my charger.—
It wasn’t entirely a lie.
Mostly just incomplete.
Amelie watched him disappear toward the private suite at the very back of the plane, her brows pulling together slightly as the door closed behind him. She stayed still for a second longer before letting out a tiny sigh through her nose.
—Sorry,— she murmured toward the nail artist before carefully shifting in her seat.
Immediately Jared looked up from where he sat across from Meredith and Carla, his expression already suspicious because apparently he knew her too well by now.
—Be careful with the nails,— he warned immediately, pointing at her without even pretending to soften the tone. —And I’m giving you five minutes. If you’re not back, I’m coming to get you myself.—
Amelie rolled her eyes automatically as she stood carefully, holding her hands slightly awkwardly away from herself while the fresh polish dried.
—Yes, dad,— she replied dryly, earning an unimpressed look from him before she slipped out the door anyway.
The hallway of the jet felt quieter away from the chaos, softer somehow, the steady hum of the engines filling the space underneath everything else. She pushed open the private suite door gently before closing it behind her again, immediately scanning the room.
Empty.
Well.
Mostly.
Charlie’s head lifted instantly from where he had claimed the center of the bed like he paid for the flight himself, ears perking up the second he saw her before he scrambled excitedly toward the edge, tail wagging hard enough to shake half his body.
—Sorry,— she murmured toward the nail artist before carefully shifting in her seat.
Immediately Jared looked up from where he sat across from Meredith and Carla, his expression already suspicious because apparently he knew her too well by now.
—Be careful with the nails,— he warned immediately, pointing at her without even pretending to soften the tone. —And I’m giving you five minutes. If you’re not back, I’m coming to get you myself.—
Amelie rolled her eyes automatically as she stood carefully, holding her hands slightly awkwardly away from herself while the fresh polish dried.
—Yes, dad,— she replied dryly, earning an unimpressed look from him before she slipped out the door anyway.
The hallway of the jet felt quieter away from the chaos, softer somehow, the steady hum of the engines filling the space underneath everything else. She pushed open the private suite door gently before closing it behind her again, immediately scanning the room.
Empty.
Well.
Mostly.
Charlie’s head lifted instantly from where he had claimed the center of the bed like he paid for the flight himself, ears perking up the second he saw her before he scrambled excitedly toward the edge, tail wagging hard enough to shake half his body.
A small smile tugged at her mouth despite herself.
—Hi, baby,— she murmured softly, walking toward the bed before practically dropping onto it face-first with a tired groan, careful only at the last second to avoid ruining her nails.
Charlie immediately climbed on top of her like he had been personally abandoned, paws pressing against her stomach while she laughed quietly and started scratching behind his ears automatically.
The bathroom door finally clicked open a few seconds later, soft light spilling across the darker cabin suite as steam drifted faintly out behind him, and Amelie lifted her head just enough from where it had sunk into the comforter to see Lando step back into the room. His tie was already loosened again despite the fact that someone would absolutely fix it the second he returned to the glam section, the sleeves of his shirt rolled unevenly to his forearms like he had stopped caring halfway through, exhaustion hanging from him in visible waves now that nobody else was in the room forcing him to hold himself together properly.
Charlie abandoned her immediately.
Traitor.
The dog scrambled off her stomach the second he noticed Lando, sprinting toward him with renewed excitement, and Lando barely had enough energy to react before Charlie’s paws hit his legs.
—Mate,— he sighed tiredly, though there was no real annoyance behind it, only exhaustion softened by affection as he bent slightly to scratch absentmindedly at the dog’s head.
His charger dangled loosely from one hand.
So apparently he had actually gone to get it.
Amelie watched him quietly while he crossed the room, the slight drag in his steps impossible to miss now that they were alone, the kind of tiredness that sat deeper than sleep. He dropped the charger somewhere near the nightstand without looking before sitting beside her on the edge of the bed with a long exhale, shoulders slumping forward for a second like his body had finally stopped pretending it wasn’t running on fumes.
Then, without a word, he let himself fall backward beside her.
The mattress dipped softly beneath his weight.
Charlie immediately settled between them like this had always been the plan.
For a few seconds neither of them said anything. They just laid there side by side staring up at the ceiling of the private suite while the low vibration of the plane hummed beneath them, muffled voices drifting faintly through the walls from the glam area outside. Somewhere further toward the front of the jet someone laughed too loudly before being shushed immediately after, and the normality of it made the moment feel strangely suspended, carved out from the chaos around them.
Amelie turned her head first.
Her eyes moved slowly across his profile, taking in the exhaustion sitting heavy beneath his eyes, the slight tension still lingering in his jaw even now, and something in her chest softened painfully at how hard he was trying to carry all of it quietly.
—You know…— she started softly, fingers absentmindedly scratching lightly at Charlie’s side while she spoke, —we don’t have to go if you don’t want to.—
Lando’s eyes shifted toward her slowly.
—To the Met,— she clarified gently. —We could literally fake our deaths and disappear in New York for a day. People would survive.—
That earned the faintest breath of amusement from him, barely there but enough that she noticed it.
—You’re performing tonight,— he murmured after a second, voice rough with exhaustion but softer than before. —Missing that’s probably not an option.—
Amelie shrugged one shoulder slightly against the mattress.
—Maybe I suddenly lose my voice dramatically. Very tragic. Very artistic.—
A quiet scoff left him at that, finally turning his head fully toward her now.
—No chance,— he muttered.
Her mouth curved a little at hearing something closer to him again instead of the distant version that had existed since Miami ended.
—Okay,— she conceded lightly. —Then you can be the one drinking tonight and I’ll be the responsible adult for once.—
Lando actually looked offended.
His brows lifted slowly as he stared at her for a second like she had just said the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard in his life.
—Really?— he asked flatly.
Amelie rolled her eyes immediately.
—Oh my God, shut up.—
—Responsible adult? You?— he continued, clearly too tired to properly tease her but unwilling to let it go anyway. —That’s genuinely one of the craziest things you’ve ever said to me.—
—I can be responsible,— she defended weakly, though even she didn’t sound fully convinced.
Lando hummed skeptically.
—Mhm.—
She shoved his shoulder lightly.
—You’re annoying.—
—You once cried because a waiter told you they ran out of fries.—
—I was overwhelmed.—
—You also almost got arrested in Milan because you tried climbing a fountain at two in the morning.—
—That was one time.—
—There are photos, Amelie.—
She groaned dramatically, dropping her face into the pillow for a second while he let out the quietest laugh she’d heard from him all day, tired and rough around the edges but real enough to loosen something in her chest.
When she lifted her head again, he was already looking at her differently now.
Softer.
More present.
The heaviness from Miami still sat behind his eyes, still lingered around him like something bruised, but it wasn’t swallowing him whole anymore. Not here.
Not with her.
Amelie’s expression softened too as she looked back at him, her voice quieter when she spoke again.
—I just want you to have fun tonight,— she admitted honestly. —Like… actually fun. Not sponsor dinner fun.—
Something in his face shifted at that.
The corners of his mouth pulled upward faintly, tired but genuine, his gaze holding hers longer this time.
—With you I always have fun,— he said simply.
The words landed softly between them.
Too soft.
Too honest.
Amelie felt her smile break before she could stop it, smaller this time, warmer, and Lando’s eyes dropped briefly to her mouth like the movement had pulled him there automatically.
The space between them disappeared slowly.
Naturally.
Like it always did.
He leaned in first, one hand sliding lazily across the sheets until his fingers brushed against her waist, and she turned toward him without thinking, meeting him halfway as his lips touched hers in a kiss that started soft enough to almost feel sleepy. Exhaustion lingered in it, in the way neither of them rushed, in the way he exhaled quietly against her mouth before kissing her again slower this time, deeper, like the rest of the world had finally quieted enough for him to breathe properly again.
Charlie shifted indignantly between them, squished by the movement.
Neither cared.
Amelie’s hand lifted instinctively toward his jaw, fingertips brushing lightly against the slight roughness there while his thumb traced absentminded circles against her side beneath the fabric of her clothes, and for a second everything outside the room disappeared entirely.
The door suddenly swung open.
They broke apart immediately.
Too quickly.
Lando pulled back just enough to look vaguely guilty while Amelie blinked up toward the doorway, still slightly breathless, and there stood Jared with his arms crossed and the most unimpressed expression either of them had ever seen.
He pointed dramatically toward the watch on his wrist.
—Five minutes,— he said flatly.
Amelie let out a groan loud enough to qualify as suffering while Lando dropped his head back against the mattress with a tired laugh, one hand dragging over his face.
—You’re worse than Meredith,— Amelie complained.
—And yet somehow you fear me more,— Jared replied without missing a beat.
Unfortunately.
He was correct.
--------------
liked by sunsetamelie, softamelie, and others
hollywoodfix: BREAKING 🚨 Amelie Dayman’s private jet has officially landed in New York ahead of tonight’s Met Gala 👀 passengers were covered exiting the plane with umbrellas due to the rain, but fans are convinced it was Amelie and Lando Norris arriving together after spending the weekend in Miami…
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papayagirl: THE SHAVE MEANT SOMETHING AFTER ALL 😭 → loveroflan: WE WERE RIGHT → lanmeliehub: detective work successful
ameliecore: umbrellas??? this is already cinematic → goldenhouramelie: met gala movie scene
fanameliee: THEY MADE THE FLIGHT OMG → cherryvibes: barely 😭 → dreamygirlie: last minute kings
sunsetamelie: imagine them getting ready together for the met 😭 → goldenhouramelie: i can’t handle this
lanfan44: yeah no he definitely shaved for tonight → papayaprincess: confirmed → loveroflan: evidence complete
ameliecentral: the umbrellas are taking me out 😭 → cherryvibes: hidden identities
fanpageamelie: miami breakfast to met gala in one day is crazy work → goldenhouramelie: power couple schedule → softamelie: booked and busy
lanmeliezone: imagine being on that jet 😭
amelievibes: they really went from paddock mode to fashion mode overnight → cherryvibes: range → dreamygirlie: unmatched
f1girlie: lando at the MET GALA… yeah i need to see this immediately → gridwatcher: history
softamelie: the way fans clocked the shave HOURS ago 😭 → goldenhouramelie: we know our people → sunsetamelie: never miss
fanameliee: watch them step out looking insane tonight
lanfanclub: the weather trying to stop them and failing 😭 → papayaprincess: love wins → loveroflan: always
amelieupdates: the umbrella pics feel so old hollywood → goldenhouramelie: exactly
papayagirl: i just know anna wintour approved this relationship personally → loveroflan: PLEASE 😭 → lanmeliehub: honorary theory
sunsetamelie: imagine the afterparty pics we’re getting later omg → cherryvibes: i’m seated
amelievibes: the umbrellas are so gossip girl coded 😭 → goldenhouramelie: upper east side energy → softclouds: literally
papayadreams: from a miami breakfast date to the met gala in HOURS 😭 → cherryvibes: insane schedule → dreamygirlie: celebrity life fr
fanameliee: the way we all immediately knew the shave was suspicious 😭
ameliecentral: they probably landed and immediately got dragged into fittings 😭 → cherryvibes: no rest ever → dreamygirlie: exhausting but iconic
lanmeliezone: what if the umbrellas are because they don’t want us seeing the looks yet 👀 → papayaprincess: EXACTLY
coastallover: i just know her met look is gonna destroy everyone → cherryvibes: vogue paddock foreshadowing → dreamygirlie: she’s coming for blood
fanpageamelie: lando at the met gala feels fake still 😭 → goldenhouramelie: alternate universe
papayagirl: imagine the airport staff realizing who just landed 😭 → loveroflan: chaos instantly → lanmeliehub: i’d lose my mind
ameliecore: this whole relationship feels like a fanfic sometimes → cherryvibes: genuinely
gridgirlie: paddock boyfriend to met gala boyfriend pipeline 😭
softamelie: if they walk together tonight i’ll never recover → goldenhouramelie: genuinely → sunsetamelie: life changing event
amelieupdates: this might be their most iconic day yet
fanameliee: the umbrellas somehow confirmed MORE than seeing them clearly 😭 → goldenhouramelie: exactly → softamelie: mystery works
lanfanclub: imagine them in the car on the way to the hotel scrolling through all our theories 😭 → papayaprincess: laughing at us
--------------
The top of the Met steps felt almost unreal beneath their feet, the noise from below softened just enough by distance to turn into a constant hum of cameras, voices, and music drifting upward through the warm New York night. The rain from Miami already felt like another universe entirely, though the exhaustion from the chaotic travel day still lingered somewhere beneath the adrenaline, hidden under layers of couture, makeup, and practiced smiles. Spotlights washed everything in gold and white, catching every rhinestone stitched into Amelie’s gown until she practically shimmered each time she moved, the strips of photographic film layered through the Dior dress flickering under the lights like pieces of actual cinema wrapped around her body.
Lando stayed just behind her as they reached the interview platform, his hand brushing lightly against the small of her back while assistants adjusted microphones and photographers shouted their names from somewhere below the stairs. The black Dior tuxedo somehow made him look even taller under the lights, the sharp tailoring impossibly clean against the chaos around them, though the silver floral brooch pinned at his lapel softened it just enough to mirror her look perfectly. Together they looked less like two exhausted people who had gotten ready on a private jet six hours ago and more like they had stepped directly out of some old Hollywood film themselves.
La La Anthony greeted Amelie first with immediate excitement the second she stepped toward the interview spot. —Oh my God, look at you,— she said warmly, reaching for her hand while production slipped a microphone into Amelie’s grasp. —This is incredible.—
Amelie laughed softly, still slightly breathless from the carpet itself, her eyes flicking briefly toward the cameras before back to La La. —Hi,— she greeted warmly.
Her gaze shifted almost immediately past the camera setup, finding Lando lingering just outside the frame while someone adjusted lighting near him.
—Lan, come here,— she called automatically, already reaching one hand out toward him.
He laughed quietly under his breath at the nickname slipping out so naturally before stepping closer without hesitation, moving beside her while someone hurried to place another mic in his hand. He greeted La La politely, exchanging a quick hug before settling beside Amelie, close enough that his arm brushed hers naturally.
La La looked between them dramatically. —You two are actually ridiculous tonight,— she declared, making both of them laugh immediately. —Like… this is art. Tell me everything because I cannot stop staring at this dress.—
Amelie looked down instinctively at the gown, carefully lifting a section of the skirt slightly between her fingers. —It’s custom Dior by Jonathan Anderson,— she explained, her voice softening slightly into something more genuine the second she started talking about it. —And it’s inspired by Sabrina, the Audrey Hepburn movie.—
—One of my favorite films ever,— she added quickly, smiling wider now. —The whole dress is made from strips of photographic film from the movie, which is insane because it took forever. They were literally sewing little Audrey Hepburn scenes onto me this morning.—
La La gasped dramatically, leaning closer to examine the details. —Stop. That is unbelievable.—
Lando looked over at her with a small smile that had already shifted from public-camera mode into something softer, more personal, like he genuinely still couldn’t get over seeing her in it.
—She’s been talking about this dress for months,— he added lightly. —I’ve known about Sabrina against my will for at least half a year now.—
Amelie elbowed him immediately, laughing. —You love Sabrina. Don’t lie.—
—I know the plot now,— he defended himself with mock seriousness. —That’s commitment.—
La La laughed loudly at that before turning toward him. —Okay, but this tux? Sir. You look good.—
Lando glanced down instinctively, slightly awkward already under the attention. —It’s Dior too,— he explained. —Jonathan basically tied both looks together with the silver details. Mine’s a bit simpler because obviously…— he gestured vaguely toward Amelie’s gown. —There’s no competing with this.—
—You clean up nicely though,— Amelie added sweetly, looking up at him with exaggerated sincerity.
—Thank you,— he replied immediately, completely serious in a way that made her laugh harder.
La La smiled watching them before shifting the conversation again. —Amelie, I have to ask. Coachella. That performance was unbelievable. How did that feel?—
Amelie blinked once like she genuinely had to think back to it. —Honestly? I think I blacked out a little bit,— she admitted, laughing softly. —Like… I remember getting on stage, and then suddenly it was over and I was in a car crying, so… I think it went well?—
La La burst into laughter. —That is the realest answer ever.—
—No, genuinely,— Amelie continued, smiling wider now. —It was so fun though. Terrifying, but fun. I think when something matters that much your brain just kind of… protects you from fully processing it in real time.—
Lando nodded beside her immediately. —She came off stage crying for like an hour after.—
—Okay, traitor,— she muttered under her breath, making him grin.
La La shifted toward him next. —And speaking of huge moments… world champion.—
The words still sounded strange every time somebody said them out loud.
Lando let out a tiny breath through his nose, smiling shyly almost immediately. —Yeah… weird,— he admitted honestly. —Really weird. Good weird. I still don’t think it fully feels real half the time.—
—You earned it though,— La La replied warmly.
His smile softened at that, quieter now. —Thank you.—
She looked between them again, clearly enjoying how naturally they bounced off each other. —Both of you have insane schedules. How do you make a relationship work with everything you each have going on?—
The question settled softer between them than most of the others had.
Amelie looked at Lando briefly before answering first. —A lot of FaceTime,— she said immediately.
—A concerning amount,— Lando corrected.
She nodded seriously. —Like genuinely unhealthy amounts.—
La La laughed while Lando continued. —I think it’s mostly just understanding each other’s worlds. Like… she gets when racing gets insane, and I understand when she disappears into rehearsals for twelve hours and forgets her phone exists.—
—I don’t forget it exists,— Amelie argued.
He turned to look at her flatly. —You once left me on delivered for fourteen hours.—
—I was working!—
—You posted on Instagram during those fourteen hours.—
La La was laughing so hard now she had to lower her microphone briefly.
Amelie shook her head dramatically before smiling again, softer this time. —We just try really hard to show up for each other whenever we can. Even when schedules are awful.—
Lando nodded once beside her, the edge of his thumb brushing lightly against her hand where nobody except the closest cameras would notice. —Yeah. That part matters most.—
La La visibly melted for a second before immediately recovering. —Okay, important question. Is tonight technically a date night?—
Both of them looked at each other at the exact same time with matching expressions of confusion, like neither had actually considered it before now.
—I mean…— Amelie started slowly, laughing.
—It’s been stressful enough today that I don’t think either of us remembered this was supposed to be glamorous,— Lando admitted.
—Our flight got rescheduled because of the weather,— Amelie explained. —So we literally got ready on the plane trying to make it here in time.—
La La gasped dramatically. —No.—
—Yes,— both of them answered at once.
Lando shook his head. —There were curling irons flying around turbulence. It was horrible.—
—Traumatizing actually,— Amelie added.
La La laughed again. —But now? Now it’s date night?—
Amelie smiled, glancing around the museum entrance glowing behind them. —I think now that the carpet’s over… yeah. Probably.—
—Yeah,— Lando agreed softly. —Now we can actually enjoy it a bit.—
—What are you most excited for inside?— La La asked.
—Friends,— Amelie answered immediately. —There’s so many people we haven’t seen in forever here tonight.—
—The performance,— Lando added casually.
Amelie’s head snapped toward him so fast the jeweled film-strip on her forehead caught the light dramatically.
—That's always fun, yeah— she say slowly, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
His expression immediately shifted into fake innocence. —Yeah...—
—You’re literally impossible,— she muttered, though the smile breaking across her face ruined any attempt at annoyance.
La La laughed loudly again, already shaking her head. —You two are adorable. I’m obsessed.—
Lando groaned softly at the word adorable while Amelie laughed beside him, leaning slightly into his shoulder without even noticing as flashes exploded around them all over again.
--------------
liked by papayadreams, lanmeliezone, and others
lanmelieupdates: “there were curling irons flying around turbulence” 😭✈️ lando and amelie’s met gala interview tonight was basically 10 minutes of them exposing each other, flirting, surviving weather delays, and somehow still looking like the prettiest people alive on the carpet 🤍
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papayagirl: “i’ve known about Sabrina against my will for at least half a year now” 😭😭😭 → loveroflan: boyfriend of the YEAR → lanmeliehub: he learned the plot willingly btw
ameliecore: THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HER WHEN SHE TALKS ABOUT THE DRESS 😭 → goldenhouramelie: completely obsessed with her
fanameliee: “you posted on instagram during those fourteen hours” OH HE CLOCKED HER 😭 → cherryvibes: evidence presented immediately → dreamygirlie: no hesitation
sunsetamelie: “curling irons flying around turbulence” is taking me OUT 😭✈️ → goldenhouramelie: genuinely sounds traumatic
lanfan44: yeah no they’re actually best friends AND in love → papayaprincess: the perfect combo → loveroflan: exactly
ameliecentral: the thumb brushing against her hand part i’m SICK → cherryvibes: tiny gestures kill me
papayadreams: “a concerning amount” of facetime 😭 → loveroflan: long distance warriors → lanmeliehub: realest couple ever
fanpageamelie: “our flight got rescheduled” and they still showed up looking like THAT???
amelievibes: the way they answer questions together without thinking 🥹 → cherryvibes: synced up → dreamygirlie: soulmates idc
f1girlie: “you’re literally impossible” 😭 → gridwatcher: the fondness in that sentence
softamelie: him saying she cried for an hour after coachella 😭 → goldenhouramelie: proud boyfriend → sunsetamelie: so soft
fanameliee: “there’s no competing with this” ABOUT HER DRESS 😭 → cherryvibes: he admires her so much
lanfanclub: the fact he survived a plane full of glam teams and curling irons 😭
amelieupdates: “friends” “the performance” THEY’RE SO CUTE 😭 → goldenhouramelie: she got suspicious immediately
papayagirl: “now we can actually enjoy it a bit” 🥹 → loveroflan: finally date night → lanmeliehub: after all the chaos
sunsetamelie: this interview felt way too intimate to be public 😭 → cherryvibes: we witnessed something
ameliecore: lando groaning at being called adorable 😭 → goldenhouramelie: meanwhile he’s the most adorable man alive → softclouds: exactly
coastallover: “they were literally sewing little Audrey Hepburn scenes onto me this morning” 😭 → velvetroses: the dedication → midnightamelie: couture queen
lanmeliezone: the way he instantly thanked her compliment seriously 😭 → starrylan: “thank you” PLEASE
ameliehearts: “i think i blacked out a little bit” after HEADLINING coachella 😭
f1romantics: the interview started as fashion and turned into couple therapy 😭 → paddocklove: genuinely → raceweekendd: and i loved every second
goldenpapaya: “you left me on delivered for fourteen hours” 😭 → cherrysoda: he’s BEEN holding that in
sunflowermelie: the way she looked at him after he mentioned the performance inside 👀 → lovelane: she KNOWS him → dreamersclub: suspicious instantly
tracksidebabe: “i know the plot now. that’s commitment.” 😭 → lovergirlie: boyfriendism
ameliezone: no because them surviving turbulence while getting ready for the met is SO them → coastallover: chaotic glamorous couple → softclouds: romcom leads
papayaprincesss: “that part matters most” with the thumb brushing her hand 😭
velvetamelie: lando talking about her rehearsals like he’s witnessed all of it 🥹 → starrylan: because he probably has → moonlightvibes: support system fr
gridgirlypop: “adorable” making him groan 😭 → raceweekendd: meanwhile he’s literally smiling at her every 2 seconds
softpapaya: them looking at each other at the exact same time when asked if it was date night 😭 → dreamersclub: same brain
ameliehearts: “i’ve known about Sabrina against my will” meanwhile he knew every detail 😭
lan4worldchamp: him calling himself “public camera mode” without saying it 😭 → paddockangel: and then instantly softening around her → softfilms: you could SEE it
midnightamelie: the chemistry is actually insane → velvetroses: effortless
f1fairytale: this interview is gonna live in my head for months → moonlightvibes: permanently → raceweekendd: engraved into history
--------------
The applause still clung to her skin by the time she stepped away from the performance space, warm and echoing somewhere deep in her chest even as the orchestra area behind her slowly dissolved back into the polished chaos of the Met Gala dinner. Her heartbeat hadn’t fully settled yet, adrenaline still humming softly through her veins beneath the gown that shimmered every time the lights hit her. Conversations seemed louder now after being on stage, the entire museum alive with music, laughter, camera flashes, and the low clinking of glasses against plates, but everywhere she walked people stopped her, turning toward her with smiles and congratulations and lingering praise that made her feel slightly detached from herself, like she was watching the night happen from somewhere just outside her own body.
One actor stopped her to tell her the performance was “cinematic.” A designer grabbed both her hands dramatically and declared she had “healed old Hollywood.” Someone else kissed her cheek while talking excitedly about Coachella and the transition into the orchestra arrangement she had done tonight. She smiled through all of it warmly, graciously, still slightly breathless as she thanked each person one after another, her fingers curled loosely around the champagne flute somebody had handed her at some point and that she still hadn’t actually drunk from.
The room blurred softly around her as she continued back toward her table, until a familiar face caught her attention near one of the floral installations, and immediately her expression softened into something more genuine.
—Hailey,— Amelie greeted warmly.
Hailey Bieber turned toward her almost instantly, smiling wide before stepping forward to hug her carefully around the gown. —Oh my God, you were amazing,— she said immediately, pulling back just enough to look at her properly. —Like genuinely insane. Everyone was losing their minds at our table.—
Amelie laughed softly, still flushed slightly from performing. —Thank you,— she said honestly. —I was trying not to fall down the stairs the whole time.—
Hailey snorted quietly. —Nobody could tell.—
Amelie smiled again before something softer crossed her expression, her fingers brushing lightly against the stem of the untouched glass in her hand as she tilted her head slightly. —Actually… I wanted to thank you again,— she admitted.
Hailey blinked once, surprised. —Me? For what?—
A small, almost shy laugh escaped Amelie as she looked briefly down at the floor before back at her. —For Coachella. For the whole “One Less Lonely Girl” thing.—
Recognition immediately flashed across Hailey’s face, followed by immediate amusement.
—Oh my God.—
Amelie smiled wider now, softer around the edges. —I know that song is really special to you,— she continued carefully. —And I know the whole thing probably could’ve felt weird, but… I don’t know. It made little me really happy. Like genuinely healed some inner child thing I didn’t know I still had.—
Hailey’s expression melted instantly into something affectionate and understanding, a laugh slipping out of her as she shook her head lightly.
—You do not have to thank me for that,— she said immediately. —Besides, like I told you that day, the person who actually coordinated all of it was your boyfriend.—
Both of their heads turned almost instinctively toward the direction of Amelie’s table.
Lando sat there with his jacket unbuttoned now, tie loosened slightly, leaning back in his chair while talking animatedly with Marcello Hernández, one hand moving dramatically as he told some story that had half the table laughing. Even from across the room she could tell he had been drinking, the looseness in his posture obvious now compared to the carefully composed version of him from the carpet earlier. His cheeks were slightly flushed under the warm lighting, curls messier than before from repeatedly running his hands through them throughout the night.
Hailey followed Amelie’s gaze before smiling knowingly.
—He is so in love with you,— she said casually, though the certainty behind it made the words land heavier than expected.
Amelie looked back toward her slowly, the corners of her mouth lifting almost helplessly.
—So am I,— she replied quietly, meaning herself.
Hailey’s smile widened instantly at that. —Okay then,— she teased lightly. —When’s the ring coming?—
The question was clearly meant jokingly, playful and easy beneath the glamour and champagne haze of the night, but the reaction it pulled from Amelie happened before she could stop it.
Just a flicker.
A tiny hesitation.
Her smile faltered for half a second too long.
Hailey noticed immediately.
Her expression softened almost at once, concern replacing the teasing sparkle in her eyes. —Oh God,— she said quickly, lowering her voice slightly. —Did I push too much?—
—No,— Amelie answered immediately, shaking her head just as fast, the denial genuine even as she exhaled softly afterward. —No, you didn’t say anything wrong.—
She glanced back toward Lando again unconsciously, watching him laugh at something Marcello said before taking another sip of his drink.
—We both know we’re… it for each other,— she admitted more quietly now. —That part’s never really been the problem.—
Hailey tilted her head slightly, studying her. —Then what’s stopping you?—
The question sat between them gently, without judgment.
Amelie let out a soft breath through her nose, fingers tightening slightly around the stem of the glass. —Our lives,— she admitted after a moment. —The schedules. The traveling. Everything’s always moving so fast and… complicated.—
Hailey laughed softly at that, not mockingly, more like someone who had already lived through the exact same fear before.
—Babe, that’s not gonna change,— she said simply.
Amelie looked back at her.
—I got married young,— Hailey continued with a small shrug. —And Justin and I still have insane schedules. That part never suddenly becomes easy one day. If anything, life just keeps getting busier.—
Her smile softened into something more sincere now.
—So what’s really the difference between getting married tomorrow or getting married in ten years?—
The question lingered longer than Amelie expected it to.
Not heavily.
Not painfully.
Just enough to settle somewhere quiet inside her chest while the noise of the gala continued around them, chandeliers glowing above tables overflowing with flowers and crystal, conversations folding into laughter and music somewhere deeper inside the museum halls. She looked down briefly at the untouched champagne in her hand, watching the bubbles rise slowly toward the surface while Hailey’s words circled softly through her head.
What really was the difference?
Five years.
Ten years.
The schedules would still exist. The flights. The rehearsals. The races. The weeks apart followed by nights clinging to each other like they had to make up for lost time before being pulled away again. None of that was magically going to disappear one day because the timing finally became “perfect.”
Perfect didn’t really exist for people like them.
Amelie opened her mouth slightly, ready to answer even though she still wasn’t fully sure what the answer actually was, but before she could, warmth suddenly pressed against her back.
Two arms slid carefully around her waist from behind, familiar and heavy in that loose way that immediately told her exactly how much champagne and whiskey Lando had consumed while she had been performing. His body folded naturally against hers, chest warm against the exposed back of her gown as his head dipped toward her shoulder, lips brushing softly against her skin just below her ear.
—There she is,— he murmured lowly, voice roughened slightly by alcohol and exhaustion and affection all tangled together.
The scent of expensive cologne mixed unmistakably now with liquor, warm and sweet against her skin, and despite herself she smiled instantly, her body relaxing back into him on pure instinct alone.
His lips pressed another lazy kiss against her shoulder.
—You were so good up there,— he added softer this time, almost like he was saying it more to himself than anyone else.
Amelie tilted her head slightly toward him, smiling helplessly now as one of her hands came up to rest lightly over his forearm where it crossed her waist. —Looks like someone had fun while I was gone,— she teased gently, turning her face just enough to glance back at him from the corner of her eye.
Lando only hummed against her shoulder, entirely unashamed. —You told me to,— he replied simply.
Hailey watched the entire interaction with the kind of expression people got when witnessing something so obviously intimate it almost felt invasive to stand near it, though amusement still danced in her eyes.
Amelie rolled her eyes fondly before turning her head enough to kiss him softly.
It was meant to be brief.
Just quick affection.
A small public kiss.
But Lando followed it immediately the second she pulled away, chasing another one lazily like he physically couldn’t help himself now that he had her attention, his grip around her waist tightening slightly as he smiled against her mouth.
—Hi,— he murmured belatedly, clearly deciding greetings came after kissing apparently.
She laughed quietly against his lips. —Hi.—
His chin rested briefly against her shoulder afterward, eyes half-lidded and softer now than they had been all weekend, the sharp edges of Miami finally dulled beneath alcohol and exhaustion and her presence beside him. From this close she could see the flush high on his cheeks, the slight heaviness in his posture that only appeared when he’d crossed from tipsy into genuinely drunk, though he still held onto her carefully, consciously mindful of the gown and the film strips layered through it.
Hailey crossed her arms lightly, smiling wider now. —Okay, yeah. Never mind. He’s obsessed with you.—
Lando lifted his head just enough to look at her with complete seriousness despite the alcohol. —Obviously,— he answered like it was the dumbest observation in the world.
Amelie actually laughed at that, full and genuine now, her hand sliding up to brush lightly through the curls at the back of his neck while he immediately leaned into the touch without thinking.
Hailey pointed at him dramatically. —See? This is what I’m talking about.—
Lando blinked slowly. —What are we talking about?—
—Marriage,— Hailey replied bluntly.
Amelie immediately closed her eyes for one second in quiet embarrassment.
Lando, meanwhile, looked completely unfazed.
Actually worse than unfazed.
Interested.
His brows lifted slightly before he looked down toward Amelie, still tucked comfortably against him. —Oh?—
—Stop,— she muttered immediately, lightly elbowing him in the ribs.
He laughed softly under his breath, the sound warm against her shoulder as his grip around her waist tightened again just slightly.
—No, genuinely,— Hailey continued, now fully entertained by both of them. —I asked what was stopping you two and apparently the answer is schedules.—
Lando let out a quiet scoff through his nose. —That’s a terrible excuse.—
Amelie turned her head sharply toward him. —Excuse me?—
He only smiled sleepily at her, completely unbothered. —You think if we’re still doing this in ten years our schedules are suddenly gonna be normal?—
Her mouth opened slightly before closing again because annoyingly—deeply annoyingly—he sounded far too similar to Hailey.
—You’re drunk,— she informed him instead.
—Correct,— he nodded immediately.
Hailey burst into laughter while Lando looked entirely too pleased with himself for someone currently half-hanging off his girlfriend in the middle of the Met Gala.
Amelie shook her head softly, trying to hide her smile as she looked back down at the champagne glass in her hand, though now the nervousness sitting in her chest felt different somehow. Smaller.
Less frightening.
Lando’s thumb moved absentmindedly against her waist beneath the delicate layers of the gown while his attention drifted between her and Hailey’s conversation, still lazily attached to her like he had no intention of letting go anytime soon, and maybe that was the thing.
Maybe he never really had.
--------------
liked by ameliedayman, quadrant, and others
lando.jpg: some things deserve film
View all 1,341 comments
ameliedayman: oh you’re INSANE actually 😭 → lando.jpg: worth it → fanameliee: STOP THIS IS SO ROMANTIC
maxfewtrell: bro thinks he’s a director now → lando.jpg: i am → quadrant: cinema
carlossainz55: these are beautiful mate → lando.jpg: thank you 🫡 → fanpageamelie: CARLOS APPROVED
oscarpiastri: not bad → lando.jpg: highest praise possible → papayaprincess: oscar giving compliments omg
alex_albon: alright mr artist → lando.jpg: respect the vision → lilymhe: he cooked actually
ciscanorris1: my favorite account 🤍 → lando.jpg: favorite subject helped → softamelie: SCREAMING
flo_norris_showjumping: these belong in a museum → ameliedayman: stop i’ll cry → fanameliee: TOO LATE I’M ALREADY CRYING
carmenmmundt: okay photographerrrrr → lando.jpg: learning from the best → georgefan44: this is cute wait
lilymhe: these are CRAZY good
georgerussell63: better than your driving → lando.jpg: unnecessary → fanameliee: GEORGE 😭
papayagirl: “some things deserve film” HE’S IN LOVE BAD 😭 → loveroflan: down catastrophically → lanmeliehub: no recovery possible
ameliecore: the way he photographs her… → goldenhouramelie: like she’s art → softamelie: because she is
charles_leclerc: alright these are actually very cool → lando.jpg: thank you charles → fanameliee: rare wholesome interaction 😭
arthur_leclerc: pinterest boyfriend final boss → alexandramalenaleclerc: literally → lando.jpg: i’ll take it
pierregasly: not enough photos of yourself mate → lando.jpg: intentional actually → papayaprincess: HE ONLY HAS EYES FOR HER 😭
fanameliee: yeah no these are boyfriend photos not paparazzi pics → cherryvibes: exactly
sunsetamelie: the black and white one just changed my life → goldenhouramelie: genuinely breathtaking → softclouds: unreal
rebeccadonaldson: these feel like old hollywood ✨ → ameliedayman: exactly what we wanted 🥹 → softamelie: THEY HAD A VISION
kikagomes: okayyyy cinematic
lanfan44: he took these like he was in a period drama 😭 → papayaprincess: jane austen man
ameliecentral: this man got a photography account just to post her btw → cherryvibes: and i support him → dreamygirlie: fully
fanpageamelie: not the MET carpet becoming a couple photoshoot 😭
madelyncline: excuse me????? → ameliedayman: RIGHT???? → goldenhouramelie: everyone losing it 😭
coreyfogelmanis: this belongs in a gallery somewhere → lando.jpg: working on it → dreamygirlie: stopppp
papayadreams: the caption being FILM when her dress was made of film strips 😭 → loveroflan: OH MY GOD → lanmeliehub: wait that’s insane
amelievibes: he sees her like she hung the moon i’m sick → cherryvibes: exactly this
fanameliee: not him understanding the MET theme better than half the celebrities there 😭 → cherryvibes: EXACTLY → dreamygirlie: committed to the bit
papayagirl: the way every photo looks so soft and intimate 🥹 → loveroflan: he photographs her like he loves her → lanmeliehub: because he DOES
ameliecore: boyfriend camera syndrome hit him BAD → goldenhouramelie: terminal case
sunsetamelie: i just know she cried when she saw these → goldenhouramelie: immediately → softclouds: i would too
lanfan44: “some things deserve film” and the dress being made of film strips… cinema
ameliecentral: the lighting, the framing, the DETAILS??? → cherryvibes: he locked in → dreamygirlie: genuinely talented
fanpageamelie: this account started as photography and became a public declaration of love 😭 → goldenhouramelie: and i support it
papayadreams: he took these like he couldn’t believe she was real → loveroflan: EXACTLY THIS
--------------
The suite door barely had time to fully swing open before Alex and Corey were already half-carrying, half-dragging Lando through it, his weight leaning dramatically between them in a way that would’ve looked concerning if he wasn’t grinning lazily at absolutely nothing. The polished calm and elegance from the carpet earlier had dissolved somewhere between champagne number three and whatever Marcello had convinced him to drink afterward, leaving behind a version of Lando that was flushed, exhausted, overdressed, and very clearly taking her earlier you should have fun tonight comment far too seriously.
—Careful,— Amelie whispered automatically as they maneuvered him through the entryway, quickly stepping back to hold the door wider while Charlie trotted excitedly around everyone’s legs like this was the best possible ending to his evening.
—Mate, I am being careful,— Alex muttered under his breath, adjusting his grip around Lando’s arm before shooting Amelie an amused look. —He’s the one trying to walk sideways.—
—I’m not,— Lando protested immediately, though the words blurred together slightly as he lifted his head with the determination of someone who thought he sounded significantly more sober than he actually did. —I’m literally fine.—
Corey snorted softly. —You almost thanked the elevator.—
—I did thank the elevator,— Lando corrected with complete seriousness, like that somehow proved his point instead of destroying it further.
Amelie bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing too hard, one hand covering part of her mouth as she shook her head and started guiding them toward the bedroom. The exhaustion from the night still sat heavy in her bones, makeup beginning to feel tight against her skin now after hours beneath lights and cameras and performing, but watching him like this softened something inside her immediately, the edges of the long day blurring into something lighter.
By the time they reached the bedroom, Lando had given up pretending he could walk independently and practically collapsed onto the mattress the second Alex and Corey finally released him. He bounced slightly against the expensive hotel bedding before groaning dramatically into the pillows, one arm thrown over his face while his tie hung crookedly around his neck.
—Oh my God,— Amelie murmured through a laugh, moving toward him immediately. —You’re impossible.—
—He’s gone,— Corey informed her casually while beginning to tug Lando’s shoes off. —Mentally. Spiritually. Completely gone.—
Lando pointed vaguely upward without opening his eyes. —That’s rude.—
Alex ignored him entirely while helping pull off his jacket, tossing it carefully over the chair nearby before straightening back up with a sigh. —At least he made it through the event before becoming a disaster.—
—I heard that,— Lando mumbled into the mattress.
Amelie smiled helplessly, reaching down to brush his curls away from his forehead while he immediately leaned into the touch on instinct, eyes still closed.
The sight softened all three of them for a second.
Because beneath the drunkenness and exhaustion and chaos of the night, there was still something quietly intimate about the way he relaxed the second she touched him, like his body knew her before his brain could catch up.
Eventually Alex straightened fully, patting Lando’s shoulder once. —Alright. He’s alive. Our work here is done.—
Corey nodded in agreement before both of them started backing toward the door quietly, careful not to make too much noise now that the room had settled into something calmer.
Amelie followed them out, pulling the bedroom door mostly closed behind her once they stepped back into the suite’s living area, Charlie immediately abandoning his spot near the bed to trot after her again.
—Thank you,— she whispered sincerely once they reached the entryway.
Alex leaned down first, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek warmly. —Anytime.—
—Good luck,— Corey added with poorly hidden amusement before doing the same.
She rolled her eyes affectionately. —Shut up.—
Their quiet laughter followed them out into the hallway, and the second the suite door clicked shut behind them, the silence settled differently now. Softer. More private.
Charlie stayed glued to her heels as she crossed the suite slowly toward the kitchen area, finally kicking off her own heels with a relieved sigh before reaching for a glass. The cold water filled quietly while she grabbed painkillers from her bag nearby out of pure habit, already knowing tomorrow morning would hit him like a truck.
The city outside glittered through the windows, New York still awake beneath them despite the late hour, but inside the suite everything had finally slowed down.
She carried the glass and pills carefully into the bedroom, setting both gently onto his nightstand before glancing toward the bed.
The bedroom lights had been dimmed sometime while they were gone, leaving the room washed in the soft amber glow from the city outside instead, New York flickering endlessly through the floor-to-ceiling windows while rain still clung faintly to the glass from earlier. Lando hadn’t moved much from where they had left him, sprawled diagonally across the bed in complete exhaustion, one arm still half-thrown over the pillow beside him, curls a mess against the sheets. The expensive black dress shirt he still wore had come untucked slightly, the first few buttons open now, and his breathing had finally slowed into something calmer compared to the chaotic energy from half an hour earlier.
Amelie stood there quietly for a moment after setting the water and pills down, just looking at him.
There was something impossibly soft about him like this.
Not the world champion version everyone saw. Not the polished version from the carpet or the teasing one from interviews or the frustrated one from the paddock after bad races.
Just him. Completely unaware of how loved he looked.
A tiny smile pulled at her mouth before she finally disappeared into the bathroom attached to the suite, the familiar process of taking everything off beginning slowly after what felt like the longest day imaginable. The rhinestones and film strips from the gown had been carefully removed hours ago by a small army of stylists, but traces of the night still clung to her skin—glitter dusting faintly across her collarbones, hairspray stiffening the edges of her curls, makeup sitting heavy beneath tired eyes. Piece by piece she stripped the Met Gala away until all that remained was herself again, wrapped eventually in one of Lando’s oversized shirts and soft shorts, her face bare, exhaustion finally catching up to her now that the adrenaline had worn off.
When she stepped back into the bedroom, Charlie immediately lifted his head from the rug before recognizing bedtime mode and sighing dramatically, circling once in his own little bed near the window before collapsing into it with the seriousness of someone ending a very long shift.
Amelie laughed softly under her breath before climbing carefully into bed beside Lando, the mattress dipping slightly beneath her weight.
The movement stirred him almost immediately.
Slowly, lazily, he turned his head toward her, blinking his eyes open through the haze of exhaustion and alcohol until they finally found her in the dim light.
—Hi,— she whispered softly.
Lando made a quiet sound somewhere between a hum and a sigh, his face relaxing the second he saw her there beside him. His eyes were still heavy, unfocused slightly at the edges, but he shifted automatically toward her anyway like his body worked on instinct when it came to her.
Her hand slid gently into his curls, fingers combing slowly through the soft mess of them, scratching lightly against his scalp the way he loved most, and he closed his eyes immediately with another quiet exhale, the tension visibly leaving his body inch by inch beneath her touch.
For a minute neither of them spoke.
The room stayed wrapped in soft silence, broken only by distant city noise and Charlie’s occasional sleepy snore from across the room.
Eventually Lando opened his eyes again slightly, watching her through heavy lashes. —You okay?— he murmured quietly, voice rough with sleep and alcohol.
Amelie’s expression softened instantly at the question, her fingers slowing slightly in his curls as she looked down at him properly, the dim light catching in the tiredness beneath her eyes now that the glamour and adrenaline of the night had finally worn away. The oversized shirt she wore had slipped slightly off one shoulder when she settled into bed, and she pulled the blanket a little higher over herself absentmindedly before brushing her thumb lightly against his temple.
—Yeah,— she answered quietly. —I’m okay.—
Lando studied her for another second like he was trying to decide if he believed her completely, his gaze still heavy with exhaustion but clearer now than before, the haze of alcohol softened into something quieter. The city glowed faintly behind her through the windows, outlining her in soft gold and silver light, and something about the sight made his chest ache in that familiar way it always did when he looked at her too long.
Her fingers continued moving slowly through his hair before she spoke again, more carefully this time.
—About earlier… with Hailey,— she murmured.
His brows lifted faintly at that, curiosity flickering across his face despite how tired he was. —Mm?—
Amelie hesitated for the briefest second, her gaze dropping to the sheets between them before returning to him again. The conversation from downstairs still lingered somewhere in her chest, tangled up with champagne bubbles and the sight of him across the room laughing with his friends like she was the safest thing in his universe.
—You asked if I was okay,— she started softly. —And I just… don’t want you thinking I don’t wanna marry you or something because of what I said.—
The words landed gently in the quiet room.
Lando didn’t interrupt her.
Didn’t joke.
Didn’t immediately brush it off.
He just watched her carefully while she spoke, his head still resting against the pillow beside her thigh.
Amelie let out the tiniest breath through her nose before continuing, her fingers absentmindedly curling around one of his curls. —I think maybe before… I was scared of it because everything in our lives already moves so fast all the time. And I kept thinking if we added one more thing to it, maybe it would just become harder.— Her mouth curved faintly, almost embarrassed by her own honesty now. —But I don’t think it’s that I don’t want it. I think maybe I just didn’t want it yet.—
Silence settled softly between them again.
Not uncomfortable.
Just full.
Lando’s eyes stayed fixed on her face, something gentler unfolding there slowly the longer she talked, the sharpness he had carried since Miami finally nowhere to be found anymore. His hand slid lazily across the mattress until his fingers brushed against her leg beneath the blanket.
—Okay,— he murmured quietly after a moment.
Amelie blinked down at him. —Okay?—
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, sleepy and crooked and impossibly soft. —Yeah. Okay.— His thumb traced absentmindedly against the blanket. —I mean… not now is fine.—
Her chest tightened painfully at how easy he made it sound.
Like there was no pressure.
No expectation.
Just certainty.
Lando shifted slightly closer toward her then, lifting himself enough to press a slow kiss against her mouth, lingering there lazily like he had nowhere else to be anymore. The kiss tasted faintly like champagne and mint and exhaustion, and Amelie melted into it immediately, one hand slipping from his hair to cup lightly against his jaw.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against hers.
—Besides,— he mumbled sleepily, voice quieter now, teasing threading faintly through it again, —we could basically be engaged already if you think about it.—
Amelie laughed softly under her breath. —Oh my God.—
—No seriously,— he insisted, eyes barely open now as he shifted onto one elbow with sudden drunken determination. —We’re basically married anyway. You steal all my hoodies. Charlie likes you more than me. You boss me around constantly.—
—I do not boss you around constantly.—
Lando gave her a look.
She immediately started laughing harder.
—Okay, maybe sometimes,— she admitted through a grin.
—Exactly.— He nodded once like he had won something important before his attention suddenly drifted toward the nightstand beside him. His brows furrowed in concentration for a second before he leaned over clumsily, reaching toward the remains of the room service tray still sitting nearby from earlier.
His fingers fumbled clumsily through the tray for a second before finally grabbing one of the folded dinner napkins that had been abandoned beside the untouched dessert plates, his concentration suddenly absurdly serious for someone who could barely keep his eyes open. Amelie watched him with growing amusement as he carefully tore off a thin strip from the edge of it, the paper ripping unevenly beneath his hands while he squinted down at it like he was working through an engineering problem instead of whatever drunk idea had just formed in his head.
—Lando,— she laughed softly, already knowing this was about to become ridiculous. —What are you doing?—
—Shh,— he murmured immediately, the sound oddly offended, like she was interrupting something deeply important. His tongue pressed lightly against the inside of his cheek while he focused, fingers slowly twisting the strip of napkin into a tiny circle with all the determination of a man building something life-changing instead of a paper disaster at two in the morning.
The room felt impossibly soft around them, wrapped in muted city light and the quiet exhaustion that always came after nights too full of emotion. Outside, New York still glowed endlessly awake beneath the rain-slick streets, but inside the suite everything had narrowed into this tiny little bubble of warmth and sleepiness and honesty that only seemed to exist when it was just the two of them. Charlie sighed heavily from his bed near the window, fully asleep now, while Lando finally looked up with the expression of someone extremely proud of himself.
—There,— he announced quietly.
Amelie bit her lip immediately to stop herself from laughing too hard as he reached for her hand beneath the blankets, carefully taking it into his own with an almost surprising gentleness despite the alcohol still clouding his movements. His fingers were warm against hers, slightly rough from years behind steering wheels and gloves and endless racing weekends, and her chest tightened unexpectedly at how careful he suddenly became.
The tiny paper circle slid onto her finger crookedly, barely surviving the journey before he leaned back again to admire it with completely genuine satisfaction.
—Perfect,— he murmured sleepily.
Amelie stared down at the pathetic little napkin ring sitting loosely against her finger before finally breaking into quiet laughter, the sound soft and helpless in the dark room. —Oh my God,— she whispered, shaking her head while looking back at him. —This is the worst ring I’ve ever seen.—
—Rude,— he mumbled instantly, already settling back against the pillows again. —That’s custom made.—
Her heart hurt.
Actually hurt.
Because he looked so impossibly sincere about it despite being drunk out of his mind, his eyes already half-closing again while she kept staring at the paper ring on her hand like somehow it carried more weight than it should’ve.
Lando turned slightly onto his side afterward, one arm lazily slipping around her waist beneath the blankets while exhaustion dragged at him harder now, but before sleep could fully pull him under again, his voice broke through the quiet one last time.
—Doesn’t matter though,— he murmured softly.
Amelie looked down at him immediately.
His eyes stayed closed now, lashes resting heavily against flushed cheeks, curls falling messily across his forehead while his thumb moved absentmindedly against her hip beneath the oversized shirt she wore.
—If you don’t think it should happen now… that’s okay,— he continued quietly, words slower now but somehow more honest because of it. —But the second you change your mind, I’m not waiting anymore.—
Her breath caught.
Lando’s face pressed slightly closer against her stomach as he kept talking, his voice rough with sleep and champagne and vulnerability he probably wouldn’t even fully remember tomorrow morning.
—I’ll put a ring on that pretty finger so fast,— he mumbled softly, his hand lazily lifting hers slightly beneath the blankets like he needed to feel it there again. —The biggest one you’ve ever seen too. Massive. Obnoxious probably.—
A watery laugh almost escaped her at that, but it got trapped somewhere painfully behind her ribs instead.
Because suddenly her entire chest felt too full.
Too tight.
Too warm.
Fear curled there immediately beside the excitement, impossible to separate one from the other anymore, both emotions wrapping around each other until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. The thought of forever with him no longer scared her in the same way it used to, which somehow terrified her even more. Somewhere along the line, without noticing exactly when it happened, Lando had stopped feeling like a beautiful possibility and started feeling inevitable.
Like home.
Like certainty.
Like something she physically couldn’t imagine losing anymore.
Her fingers trembled slightly where they rested against the back of his neck, the stupid paper ring still looped around her finger beneath the blankets while she looked down at him in the dim New York light. He was already drifting now, breathing evening out slowly against her, completely unaware of the effect his words had just left behind inside her chest.
Amelie swallowed hard, blinking quickly toward the ceiling for a second before finally curling closer against him, pressing her face softly into his curls while holding him tighter.
She still didn’t know if the ache spreading through her heart was panic or happiness.
Maybe it was both.
Maybe loving someone enough to imagine forever always felt a little bit like standing too close to the edge of something enormous.
Maybe that was the point.
You and Me and Three - Part 2/2
Pairing: Lando Norris x McKenna "Kenna" Hayes (Original Character)
Summary:
McKenna Hayes thinks she has period cramps.
Lando Norris thinks maybe, possibly, his girlfriend needs better painkillers.
Neither of them thinks they’re about to leave the hospital with a baby.
Warnings and Notes:
This author had a cold and watched like 20 episodes of I didn’t know I was pregnant. This was the result. So obviously, secret baby, cryptic pregnancy, childbirth etc. Also if you wanna tell me that this is unbelievable, I know, but it was fun to write. All the stuff that's wrong is totally my fault because my research was limited to said 20 episodes.
Big thanks to @llirawolf and to @leodette, who listen to me ramble about all my ideas and have an unending patience for me 😂
Lando did not faint.
This felt important.
He had thought about fainting. Several times. His body had made a few suggestions. There had been one deeply concerning moment where the room tilted sideways and he had to lock his knees and remind himself that McKenna was the one in labour, actually, and it would be spectacularly unhelpful if he introduced a second medical emergency.
But he did not faint.
He stayed.
He stayed beside the bed with one hand wrapped around McKenna’s and the other pressed against the damp hair at her temple, because she kept turning her face into his palm like he was something solid in a world that had gone completely mad.
Their baby was coming.
Their baby.
Their baby?!
Lando still couldn’t make the words fit properly inside his head.
A few hours ago, he had been making tea in their kitchen and asking if stomach cramps could get dangerous. Now there was an obstetrician at the end of the bed, a midwife speaking in a low, steady voice, and McKenna gripping his hand so hard he was fairly sure he would never regain full use of two fingers.
He did not care.
“Okay, McKenna,” the midwife said gently. “With the next contraction, I want you to push again.”
McKenna made a sound that tore through him.
“I can’t.”
Lando bent closer immediately. “Yes, you can.”
She turned her head just enough to glare at him, exhausted and furious and beautiful in a way that made him ache.
“Don’t you dare inspirational-speech me, Norris.”
He nodded quickly. “Right. Sorry. No speeches.”
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate you a little bit.”
“Also fair.”
“I’m serious.”
“I believe you.”
Her face crumpled then, anger folding into fear so quickly it stole the air from his lungs.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
Lando swallowed hard.
He wanted his mum. He wanted someone older and steadier and better at pretending the world wasn’t ending.
But Kenna had him.
So he stayed.
He pressed his forehead against hers and made his voice do something calm.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m right here. You’re not doing this alone.”
Her eyes squeezed shut.
The contraction hit.
Her whole body tensed, her hand crushing his, and Lando felt panic climb up his throat like a living thing. He forced it down. He forced everything down except her.
“That’s it,” the midwife said. “Good, McKenna. Keep going. You’re doing so well.”
Lando looked at her face, not anywhere else, because he knew his limits and because her face was the only thing that mattered.
“You’re doing it,” he said, voice cracking. “Kenna, you’re doing it.”
She sobbed through the push, then fell back against the pillows, shaking.
“I can’t.”
“You are,” he whispered. “You are. I promise.”
Her eyes opened, glassy with pain.
“I didn’t know.”
The words broke him.
Again.
They had been breaking him all afternoon.
“I know,” he said instantly. “I know you didn’t. Baby, I know.”
“I should’ve known.”
“No.”
“What if something’s wrong because I didn’t—”
“No.” His voice came out sharper than he meant, but he couldn’t let her go there. Not now. Not ever. “No, Kenna. You didn’t know. I didn’t know. We’re here now. That’s what matters.”
The midwife glanced at him, approving enough that Lando almost cried from the validation.
Then McKenna made another low, wounded noise.
The midwife moved closer. “Okay. Another one’s coming. You’re very close now.”
Very close.
Lando’s heart stopped.
“Very close as in…?”
McKenna’s head snapped toward him.
“Lando.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Stupid question. I’m quiet.”
“You have never been quiet in your life.”
“I can start now.”
“You’d better not,” she gasped, and then the contraction took her.
So Lando talked.
Not loudly. Not frantically. Just enough.
He told her she was brilliant. He told her she was brave. He told her he loved her. He told her about being fourteen and sitting outside that bathroom at a karting track with a packet of completely wrong pads because he had wanted to help and had no idea how. He told her he still had no idea how, but he was there. He would always be there.
McKenna pushed.
The room narrowed to her hand in his, her breath, her pain, the impossible urgency in the midwife’s voice.
“That’s it, McKenna. Again. The baby is nearly here.”
Lando’s vision blurred.
“Oh,” he said, because it was the only word left in him. “Oh, Kenna.”
McKenna started crying then. Properly. Silently. Her face twisting with terror and awe and pain all at once.
“One more,” the midwife said. “You can do this.”
McKenna shook her head.
Lando put both hands around hers.
“Yes,” he whispered. “You can. I’ve got you. Come on, love. Bring her here.”
Kenna looked at him.
For half a second, she was five again. His girl with scraped knees from climbing fences at their school. Then she was 14 at karting tracks, laughing at him with a stolen hoodie hanging off one shoulder. Then she was twenty-six, exhausted and terrified and in labour with a child neither of them had known existed that morning.
His girl.
Their baby.
The contraction came.
McKenna screamed.
Lando did not faint.
He cried, though.
He cried when the room changed all at once. When the midwife’s voice lifted. When McKenna collapsed back against the pillows. When a small, furious, wet cry split the air and rearranged every part of him.
Their baby cried.
Lando forgot how to breathe.
“There she is,” someone said.
McKenna made a broken little sound. “Is she okay?”
“She’s crying,” the doctor said warmly. “That’s a very good sign.”
The baby was placed on McKenna’s chest a moment later, tiny and red and furious, wrapped in warmth and noise and impossibility.
Lando stared.
He had seen plenty of things in his life that people called miracles. Podiums. Wins. Cars doing things they shouldn’t be able to do. Split-second saves. Perfect laps.
None of them had ever looked like this.
Their daughter had a scrunched-up face, dark damp hair, and the offended expression of someone who had been rudely evicted.
She was perfect.
She was terrifying.
She was theirs.
McKenna touched her with shaking fingers.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Lando.”
He leaned over them both, one hand on McKenna’s shoulder, the other hovering uselessly near the baby because he was suddenly very aware that babies were small and he had hands designed for steering wheels, not holding entire universes.
“She’s real,” he said stupidly.
McKenna let out a wet laugh. “Yes, Lan.”
“She’s so small.”
“She’s a newborn.”
“I know, but—” His voice broke. “Kenna, she’s so small.”
The baby made another angry little noise.
Lando laughed and cried at the same time.
“She sounds pissed off.”
“She’s your daughter.”
“Rude. Accurate, but rude.”
McKenna looked up at him then, exhausted beyond anything he had ever seen, but smiling.
A tiny smile.
Enough to ruin him.
“You didn’t faint,” she whispered.
Lando wiped his face with the back of his wrist.
“No.”
“Proud of you.”
He made a strangled noise. “I’m very proud of you.”
“I had the harder job.”
“You absolutely had the harder job.”
The midwife asked if he wanted to cut the cord.
Lando looked at McKenna.
McKenna nodded.
His hands shook so badly the doctor had to guide him, but he did it. Somehow. He cut the cord and immediately looked like he might apologise to the baby for it.
Then he was back at McKenna’s side, because being more than six inches away from either of them felt wrong.
The baby settled against McKenna’s chest, one tiny fist pressed beneath her chin.
Lando stared at that fist.
It was impossibly small.
He thought about car seats. Nappies. Bottles. Press statements. Their families. McLaren. The internet. The nursery they did not have. The clothes they had not bought. The pregnancy they had missed. The months McKenna had carried this tiny person without either of them knowing.
Then the baby opened her eyes.
Barely.
Just for a second.
Lando stopped thinking about everything else.
“Oh,” he whispered.
McKenna looked at him. “What?”
“She looked at me.”
“She can barely see.”
“She looked at me, McKenna.”
“She probably thinks you’re a blurry lamp.”
“I’m her blurry lamp.”
McKenna laughed again, softer this time, and then winced.
Lando immediately panicked. “Are you okay? Is she okay? Are both of you okay?”
The midwife smiled. “They’re both doing very well.”
Lando nodded.
Then nodded again.
Then cried harder.
McKenna watched him with tired, fond eyes.
“Lan.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.”
“No,” he admitted. “But I didn’t faint.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He bent down and kissed her forehead. Then, very carefully, he kissed the top of their daughter’s head.
She smelled like hospital and warmth and something so new it hurt.
“I love you,” he whispered to Kenna.
“I love you too.”
Then he looked at the baby.
Their baby.
Their daughter.
His whole future, arriving with no warning and a furious little cry.
“And I love you,” Lando whispered, voice shaking. “Hi, baby.”
The baby wriggled against McKenna’s chest.
Lando smiled through tears.
“I’m your dad,” he told her, like he was introducing himself at the most important press conference of his life. “I found out today, so I’m a bit behind, but I’m going to catch up. I promise.”
***
McKenna had known her daughter for forty-seven minutes and already felt terrible for not having a name ready.
It was absurd, really.
She hadn’t known there was going to be a daughter. She hadn’t known there was going to be a baby. That morning, she had thought she was having the worst period of her life. Now she was sitting in a hospital bed with a tiny, sleeping girl tucked against her chest, and Lando Norris was standing beside her with tears dried on his cheeks, one hand resting protectively near the baby’s back as if someone might try to repossess her.
Their daughter made a small noise.
Lando immediately leaned closer.
“What was that?”
“A baby noise.”
“Is it a good one?”
“I don’t know, Lan. I’ve been a mother for less than an hour.”
“Right,” he whispered. “Same.”
McKenna looked at him.
He looked back.
Then both of them started laughing, quietly and helplessly, because otherwise she thought she might cry again and never stop.
The midwife had given them a little time. Their families were waiting. Somewhere beyond the room, the world existed with its questions and its phones and its headlines and probably Lando’s mother gently terrorizing every shop within driving distance for newborn clothes.
But in here, it was just them.
McKenna. Lando. Baby.
Baby Norris-Hayes?
Baby Hayes-Norris?
Baby something.
Baby unnamed, currently wearing a hospital hat that made her look like a very angry mushroom.
“She needs a name,” McKenna whispered.
Lando nodded solemnly. “Yes.”
“Please don’t look that serious.”
“This is serious.”
“I know. That’s why your face is frightening me.”
He huffed, but his eyes didn’t leave the baby. “I just think we need to pick something perfect.”
“She arrived with no warning after hiding for nine months. I don’t think she’s concerned with perfection.”
“She’s dramatic,” Lando said, with genuine awe. “Like you.”
McKenna blinked at him.
“Like me?”
“She waited until after Japan, during the break, and then made the biggest entrance possible.”
“That sounds exactly like you.”
“No, I would have done it in Japan.”
“Lando.”
“Sorry.”
The baby shifted, a tiny fist unfurling against McKenna’s skin.
Both of them went silent.
McKenna’s chest tightened so sharply she almost couldn’t breathe. The baby was so small. So real. So impossibly here.
And then Lando, because apparently he had no instinct for emotional timing, said, “I think I know when we made her.”
McKenna closed her eyes.
“Please don’t.”
“No, listen.”
“I am begging you not to do maths about our sex life while I am holding our newborn daughter.”
“It’s not maths, it’s context.”
“That’s worse.”
Lando looked almost offended. “Silverstone.”
McKenna opened one eye. “What?”
“Silverstone 2025.”
“Lando.”
“I won.”
“I remember.”
“And you were very proud of me.”
“I was.”
“And we got back to the hotel and—”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
His mouth twitched. “I’m just saying.”
“You are just saying far too much.”
“It makes sense, though. Timeline-wise.”
“Again. Please stop doing conception math.”
“She was probably made after Silverstone,” he said, with the expression of a man presenting a deeply reasonable argument. “So maybe we should name her that.”
McKenna stared at him.
He stared back, hopeful.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am not naming my daughter Silverstone Norris.”
“It has history.”
“It sounds like a horse.”
“A very fast horse.”
“No.”
“Silver? Silvie?”
“No.”
“Stowe?”
“No.”
“Abbey?”
McKenna paused.
Lando noticed immediately. “Abbey is a corner.”
“I know Abbey is a corner.”
“And it’s a normal name.”
“It’s also not her name.”
Lando looked down at the baby, considering. “Maggotts?”
McKenna’s head snapped up. “Absolutely not.”
“Becketts?”
“No.”
“Brooklands?”
“No.”
“Copse?”
“No.”
“Luffield?”
“I will leave you.”
“You literally cannot stand up.”
“I will ask the midwife to wheel me away.”
Lando grinned for half a second, and God, she loved him. She loved him so much it hurt. Even here. Even exhausted and terrified and sore in places she refused to think about. Even with their whole life blown open around them.
He was still Lando.
Her Lando.
The boy who had grown into a man and still looked at her like she was the centre of every room he entered.
He studied their daughter again, softer now.
“What about Vale?”
McKenna blinked.
The room seemed to still.
“Vale?”
“Yeah.” He sounded suddenly shy. “It’s a corner. But it’s also… pretty. Short. Not too obvious. And she could be Vale.”
McKenna looked down at the baby.
Vale.
A tiny girl who had arrived like thunder after hiding in plain sight. A daughter made, maybe, in the afterglow of Silverstone, in one of the happiest weekends of Lando’s life. A baby who had come into the world furious and strong and louder than her size should have allowed.
Vale.
She hated that she liked it.
She really hated that she liked it.
Lando saw her face change.
“You like it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You do.”
“I said nothing.”
“McKenna.”
“It’s cute as a nickname,” she admitted reluctantly.
His whole face lit up.
“Yeah?”
“As a nickname.”
“Okay. For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Valentina?”
McKenna tilted her head. “Pretty. Maybe too fancy for us.”
“Valerie?”
She looked down again.
Valerie.
There was something soft about it. Classic. Warm. A real name, not just a joke born from panic and motorsport trivia. A name she could grow into. A name that could belong to a baby in a hospital hat and a woman someday with opinions and scraped knees and Lando’s smile.
Valerie.
Vale.
McKenna’s throat tightened.
“Valerie,” she repeated.
Lando’s voice went careful. “You like it?”
She brushed one finger lightly over the baby’s cheek.
The baby scrunched her face, offended.
McKenna smiled.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I think I do.”
Lando went very still, like he was afraid sudden movement might scare the name away.
“Valerie,” he said softly.
The baby did not react.
Lando nodded. “She likes it.”
“She’s asleep.”
“She didn’t object.”
“She can’t speak.”
“Exactly. Silence is consent.”
“Never say that again.”
“Right. Bad phrasing. Sorry.”
McKenna laughed, and then winced.
Lando’s face immediately shifted into concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not allowed to say fine anymore. Fine is banned.”
“I’m sore, exhausted, overwhelmed, and I have no idea what happens next.”
His hand covered hers, warm and shaking slightly.
“Same.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, “Valerie Norris.”
Lando’s expression changed so quickly it startled her.
Not joy first.
Surprise.
His eyes widened. His mouth parted slightly.
“What?”
McKenna frowned. “What?”
“You said Norris.”
“Yes.”
“Not Hayes?”
Oh.
Something tender and aching moved through her chest.
Lando looked genuinely stunned, like she had offered him something too precious to touch. As if he had not just stood beside her through the most terrifying hour of her life. As if he had not loved her since they were children. As if he had not already placed himself between their daughter and the entire world without even thinking about it.
McKenna shifted carefully, holding the baby closer.
“I can say Hayes-Norris if you want,” she said. “Or Norris-Hayes. We can talk about it properly.”
“No, I—” He stopped. Swallowed. “I just didn’t assume.”
“I know.”
“I mean, she’s yours.”
McKenna stared at him.
“She’s ours.”
“I know, but you did the…” He gestured vaguely at her whole body, then seemed to realize that was insane and dropped his hand. “You did the entire thing. Apparently for nine months without knowing, which is mental, and then today, and I just—she should have your name if you want.”
McKenna’s eyes burned.
She blamed hormones. Pain. Shock. The fact that their daughter existed. The fact that Lando Norris could still undo her with one badly structured sentence after two decades.
“Lando,” she said softly.
He looked at her.
“You’re her dad.”
His face crumpled.
Just slightly.
Enough.
“I know.”
“And I want her to have your name.”
His eyes filled again. “Kenna.”
“Not because mine doesn’t matter,” she added, because it did. “Not because I’m disappearing into you or something. I’m still me. She’s still mine. But you—” Her voice caught. “You’ve been my family since we were kids.”
Lando covered his mouth with one hand.
McKenna kept going, because if she stopped she would cry too hard to finish.
“And she’s yours. She should have that. She should have your name. Unless we decide to double-barrel, which is also fine, but…” She looked down at the baby. “Valerie Norris feels right.”
Lando wiped his face, badly.
“You’re trying to kill me.”
“I just gave birth. I think I’ve done enough violence for one day.”
He laughed through a sob.
Then he bent down, incredibly carefully, and kissed McKenna’s forehead.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m going to anyway.”
“Of course you are.”
He looked at the baby then, at Valerie, and his face went soft in a way McKenna had never seen before.
It was not the way he looked after a win.
Not the way he looked at her.
This was new.
A whole new expression for a whole new person.
“Valerie Norris,” he whispered.
Their daughter made a tiny sound, somewhere between a sigh and a squeak.
Lando inhaled sharply.
“She answered.”
“She has gas.”
“She answered.”
McKenna smiled.
“Fine. She answered.”
Lando reached out with one cautious finger, and Valerie’s tiny hand closed around it with shocking determination.
He froze.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
McKenna watched him fall in love.
Really, properly, permanently.
She watched it happen in real time, the exact second her chaotic, terrified, too-young-and-suddenly-not-young-at-all boyfriend became someone’s father in his bones.
“She’s strong,” he said.
“She’s had a dramatic day.”
“She’s perfect.”
“She looks like an angry potato.”
“She’s a perfect angry potato.”
McKenna laughed softly.
Valerie Norris slept on, unimpressed by both of them.
Outside the room, their families waited. Their friends waited. The world waited.
But for one more minute, McKenna let the world stay outside.
She let herself look at Lando, and Valerie, and the tiny fist around his finger.
Their daughter.
Their Vale.
Their impossible little girl, named after a corner at Silverstone because Lando Norris was ridiculous and McKenna loved him enough to let it count.
***
Text Messages: Lando Norris & Max Fewtrell
Lando: MAX
Max F: Which one of your tyres has emotionally betrayed you now?
Lando: NOT THE TIME
Max F: Oh god. What happened?
Lando: I NEED YOU TO BE NORMAL
Max F: Then why are you texting me IN ALL CAPS?
Lando: FAIR
Lando: KENNA HAD A BABY
Max F: Sorry?
Lando: A BABY
Max F: Whose baby?
Lando: MINE??? WHO ELSE?!
Max F: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN KENNA HAD A BABY
Lando: I MEAN KENNA HAD A BABY IN A HOSPITAL TODAY
Max F: SHE WAS PREGNANT????
Lando: APPARENTLY
Max F: APPARENTLY?????
Lando: WE DIDN’T KNOW
Max F: HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THERE IS AN ENTIRE BABY
Lando: MAX I HAVE HAD THIS CONVERSATION WITH TOO MANY PEOPLE TODAY
Max F: I saw her two weeks ago.
Lando: I KNOW
Max F: She stole my chips.
Lando: YES
Max F: Was that the baby?
Lando: I DON’T KNOW MAYBE PROBABLY
Max F: I shared chips with your unborn child and nobody told me?
Lando: NOBODY TOLD ME EITHER
Max F: Jesus Christ.
Lando: YEAH
Max F: Is she okay? Is Kenna okay?
Lando: YES THEY’RE BOTH OKAY SHE’S TIRED AND SORE AND A BIT TRAUMATISED BUT OKAY
Max F: They?
Lando: THE BABY
Max F: Oh my god.
Max F: You’re a dad.
Lando: DON’T SAY IT LIKE THAT
Max F: How else am I supposed to say it?
Lando: SOFTER
Max F: You are gently a father.
Lando: THAT’S WORSE
Max F: Tiny human acquired.
Lando: MAX
Max F: Sorry. Freaking out.
Lando: ME TOO
Max F: No, you don’t understand. I’m the fun uncle now.
Lando: YOU ARE NOT THE FUN UNCLE BY DEFAULT
Max F: I am absolutely the fun uncle.
Lando: MY ACTUAL BROTHER ALREADY CLAIMED UNCLE
Max F: He can be biological uncle. I am emotional uncle.
Lando: THAT SOUNDS MADE UP
Max F: All family is made up if you believe hard enough.
Lando: I hate that that was almost profound
Max F: What’s the baby’s name?
Lando: Valerie
Max F: Oh.
Max F: Mate.
Max F: That’s actually lovely.
Lando: Vale for short
Max F: As in Silverstone Vale?
Lando: …
Max F: LANDO
Lando: DON’T
Max F: OH MY GOD
Lando: DON’T YOU DARE
Max F: SILVERSTONE 2025?????
Lando: WE THINK SO
Max F: You won your home race and immediately created a child?
Lando: MAX
Max F: That is the most you thing you’ve ever done.
Lando: WE ARE NOT PHRASEING IT LIKE THAT
Max F: I am absolutely phrasing it like that at your wedding.
Lando: I WILL UNINVITE YOU
Max F: You’re going to marry her?
Lando: Obviously
Max F: Oh.
Max F: Sorry. That got me.
Lando: Yeah
Max F: You’ve loved her forever.
Lando: I know
Max F: And now you have a baby.
Lando: I know
Max F: A whole Valerie.
Lando: Yeah
Max F: Fuck.
Lando: Yeah
Max F: Are you okay?
Lando: No
Max F: Good answer.
Lando: I keep looking at her and thinking she’s real and then I think about how Kenna carried her for months and we didn’t know and then I feel sick and then Vale yawns or makes this tiny angry noise and I want to cry again
Max F: Again?
Lando: I’ve cried a lot
Max F: Yeah, obviously.
Lando: I didn’t faint though
Max F: You didn’t faint?
Lando: NO
Max F: Actually proud of you.
Lando: THANK YOU
Max F: I would’ve bet money on you fainting.
Lando: RUDE
Max F: Correct though.
Lando: Maybe
Max F: Can I come?
Lando: Not yet Kenna’s overwhelmed Family first Then when she’s ready
Max F: Yeah. Of course.
Lando: But I wanted to tell you before it becomes like… a thing
Max F: Thank you.
Lando: You’re my best friend
Max F: Don’t make me emotional when you’ve just made me an uncle.
Lando: EMOTIONAL uncle
Max F: Exactly.
Lando: She’s so small Max
Max F: How small?
Lando: Like too small like I’m scared to breathe near her but also I want to hold her forever
Max F: That sounds about right.
Lando: How do you know?
Max F: I don’t. I’m pretending for your benefit.
Lando: Helpful
Max F: Does she look like you?
Lando: She looks angry
Max F: So yes.
Lando: Kenna said the same thing
Max F: Because Kenna is correct.
Lando: I think she has Kenna’s mouth
Max F: Poor kid, then she’ll have both of you arguing with her face.
Lando: I hate you
Max F: Send picture?
Lando: I need to ask Kenna first
Max F: Good dad answer.
Lando: That made me feel weird
Max F: Dad.
Lando: STOP
Max F: Father Lando.
Lando: Blocked
Max F: Papa Norris.
Lando: I’m serious
Max F: Daddy No-rizz.
Lando: I AM BLOCKING YOU DURING THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF MY LIFE
Max F: Okay okay sorry
Max F: Love you mate. Proud of you. Proud of Kenna. Tell her I love her and I’m buying the baby the most annoying toy legally available.
Lando: Do not
Max F: Too late. Emotional uncle rights.
Lando: She’s asleep on Kenna now
Max F: Vale?
Lando: Yeah
Max F: And Kenna?
Lando: Also half asleep
Max F: Put your phone down then.
Lando: Yeah
Max F: Go be with your girls.
Lando: My girls
Max F: Yeah, mate.
Lando: Fuck
Max F: Yeah.
Lando: Okay
Lando: I’m going
Max F: Love you.
Lando: Love you too
Max F: And Lando?
Lando: Yeah?
Max F: You’re going to be brilliant.
Lando: Don’t make me cry again
Max F: Too late?
Lando: Too late.
***
Group Chat: Norris Family Chaos
(Members: Mum, Dad, Oliver, Lando, Flo, Cisca)
Lando: she’s here
Mum: Oh my darling.
Dad: Congratulations, son.
Flo: SHE’S HERE?????
Cisca: OH MY GOD
Oliver: Mate ❤️
Lando: she’s here and she’s okay kenna is okay everyone is okay
Mum: Thank God.
Flo: What’s her name?
Lando: Valerie Grace Norris
Lando: Vale
Cisca: VALERIE 😭😭😭
Mum: That’s beautiful.
Dad: A beautiful name.
Oliver: Vale Norris. That’s unreal.
Flo: Wait. Norris?
Lando: yeah
Lando: kenna said she wanted her to have my name
Lando: I cried again
Oliver: Again?
Lando: shut up
Mum: Oh, Lando.
Lando: she’s so small
Flo: Have you held her?
Lando: yes
Lando: for like two minutes
Lando: then I panicked because her head is very floppy
Cisca: Babies do that.
Lando: I KNOW THAT NOW
Oliver: Did you faint?
Lando: NO
Flo: Proud of you actually.
Lando: thank you
Mum: How is McKenna?
Lando: exhausted sore being very brave keeps saying sorry to the nurses
Cisca: That sounds like Kenna.
Dad: Tell her we love her.
Lando: I did
Lando: she cried
Flo: Oh Kenna 😭
Oliver: Can we see her? The baby, I mean.
Lando: wait
Lando:
Mum: Oh.
Mum: She’s perfect.
Dad: She really is.
Flo: I AM SOBBING
Cisca: Her little hand 😭
Oliver: She looks angry.
Lando: EVERYONE KEEPS SAYING THAT
Flo: Because she does.
Lando: she’s had a big day
Oliver: So has everyone else.
Lando: true
Mum: And McKenna really is alright?
Lando: yeah they’re monitoring both of them but doctors said they’re doing well
Dad: Good.
Lando: mum
Mum: Yes?
Lando: I’m a dad
Mum: Yes, sweetheart. You are.
Lando: that is insane
Flo: Auntie Flo is also insane but in a good way.
Cisca: Auntie Cisca 😭
Oliver: Uncle Oliver reporting for duty.
Lando: please do not all become weird
Oliver: Too late.
Dad: We’ll come when you and McKenna are ready.
Lando: maybe not yet she’s overwhelmed
Mum: Of course. We’ll wait.
Flo: I have clothes for Kenna and baby things.
Oliver: And snacks.
Cisca: And a car seat. Dad checked it.
Lando: you got a car seat already?
Dad: Yes.
Lando: I love you
Dad: Love you too.
Mum: You just stay with your girls.
Lando: my girls
Lando: fuck
Flo: Crying again?
Lando: yes
Cisca: Good.
Oliver: Fatherhood speedrun complete.
Lando: I hate all of you
Mum: No, you don’t.
Lando: no I don’t
Lando: I have to go Vale made a noise and I need to stare at her
Flo: Perfectly reasonable.
Dad: Go on.
Mum: Kiss McKenna for us.
Cisca: And tell Vale her aunties love her.
Oliver: And her uncle.
Lando: will do
Lando: still didn’t faint btw
Oliver: Historic achievement.
Lando: bye
***
Group Chat: Paddock Support Group
(Members: Alexandra Saint Mleux, Rebecca Donaldson, Lily Zneimer, Flavy Barla, Kika Gomes, Lily Muni He, Alicia Torriani, Isabella Bernadini, Kelly Piquet, Carmen Montero Mundt, McKenna Hayes)
McKenna: Hi
McKenna: Sorry it took me a minute
McKenna: Things have been a little bit insane
McKenna: But I wanted to introduce you all properly to Valerie Grace Norris. We’ll call her Vale 🤍
McKenna:
Kika: OH MY GOD
Rebecca: KENNA 😭😭😭
Alexandra: Oh, she is beautiful.
Lily Z: Oh my god. Oh my god. Hi baby Vale.
Kelly: There she is 🥺
Flavy: I’m actually crying.
Alicia: She is SO tiny.
Isabella: Look at her little face 😭
Lily MH: Oh, she’s precious.
Carmen: McKenna 🥹 she is absolutely perfect.
Kika: I need everyone to know I gasped out loud.
Rebecca: The HAIR.
Alexandra: The expression is already very Norris.
Kelly: Yes. She looks mildly offended to be here.
McKenna: That is exactly her default expression so far
Lily Z: I’m obsessed with her name.
Flavy: Valerie Grace is so beautiful.
Alicia: Vale is the cutest nickname ever.
Lily Z: Okay but I need confirmation: is Vale slightly Silverstone-coded or am I inventing lore
McKenna: Unfortunately you are not inventing lore
Rebecca: OH MY GOD
McKenna: Lando suggested naming our daughter after approximately every corner at Silverstone
Lily MH: No.
Carmen: Please tell me he did not.
McKenna: He absolutely did
McKenna: He suggested Silver Silvie Brooklands Copse Maggotts Becketts Abbey
Alicia: COPSE?????
Flavy: Absolutely not 😭
Rebecca: He cannot be left unsupervised.
Kika: Maggotts Norris is taking me out
Alexandra: Imagine introducing your child as Becketts.
McKenna: He then said Vale and I actually liked it as a nickname, so we landed on Valerie
Lily Z: Honestly? That is incredibly sweet.
Kelly: That’s a good compromise. Emotional, but not insane.
McKenna: Exactly
Isabella: And Grace?
McKenna: It just felt right Soft and simple
Carmen: It suits her.
Rebecca: It really does.
Kika: How are you, mama?
McKenna: Tired sore slightly overwhelmed a little in love
Lily MH: That sounds about right.
Alexandra: And how is Lando?
McKenna: Also tired also overwhelmed completely gone over her
Kelly: As expected.
McKenna: He has cried multiple times today because she yawned
Rebecca: That is the most Lando thing I have ever heard.
Kika: Did he faint though
McKenna: No He would like everyone to know that he did not faint
Alicia: Good for him ❤️
Flavy: Proud of him, honestly.
McKenna: He’s very proud of himself
Kelly: He texted Max in full crisis mode, so that tracks.
McKenna: I know Lando told me 😭
Lily Z: The fact that Max Verstappen became his emergency dad consultant is still killing me.
McKenna: He means well. He’s been amazing
Alexandra: Of course he has.
McKenna: He keeps looking at her like he can’t believe she’s real which, fair, because I also can’t
Kika: Kenna 🥺
Lily Z: How are you feeling about everything? Really?
McKenna: Honestly? Still a bit like I’ve been hit by a bus and then handed a baby but every time I look at her it gets a little more real in a good way
Kelly: That’s more than okay.
Rebecca: And just in case you need to hear it again: none of this is your fault.
McKenna: Thank you I know that logically still catching up emotionally
Flavy: That makes complete sense.
Carmen: You do not have to process everything all at once.
Lily MH: Exactly. One hour at a time.
McKenna: That’s basically the current strategy
Kika: Also, for the record, she is ridiculously cute. Like unfairly cute.
McKenna: I know it’s annoying
Alicia: Does she look like Lando or like you?
McKenna: At the moment she mostly looks angry
Kelly: So Lando.
McKenna: He introduced himself to her by saying, “Hi baby, I’m your dad, I only found out today so I’m a bit behind.”
Rebecca: I am EMOTIONAL
Lily Z: That is devastatingly adorable.
Flavy: I’m crying again.
Carmen: That’s so him.
Kika: Okay I need permission to bring food at some point.
McKenna: Yes please not today but soon
Rebecca: I can do freezer meals.
Kelly: I can send a proper newborn essentials list so Lando doesn’t buy something stupid at 2am.
McKenna: Please do he’s one online shopping spiral away from purchasing a gold-plated pram
Alicia: He absolutely is.
Isabella: I can do baby clothes.
Alexandra: I volunteer for soft blankets.
Carmen: I’ll bring food too, whenever you’re ready.
Lily MH: I can help with whatever practical things you need.
Lily Z: Same. And if you need someone to sit with the baby while you shower or sleep, say the word.
McKenna: You’re all going to make me cry
Kelly: That’s allowed.
McKenna: Thank you really all of you
Rebecca: Always.
Kika: Welcome to the world, Vale 🤍
Alexandra: She is already so loved.
McKenna: She really is
McKenna: And before anyone asks, no, we are not naming the next one Copse
Kika: THE NEXT ONE???
Rebecca: KENNA?????
McKenna: JOKING I am literally still in hospital please be serious
Kelly: I was about to drive over and confiscate Lando.
McKenna: Understandable
Lily Z: Please tell Vale her honorary aunties are obsessed with her already.
McKenna: I will as soon as she wakes up from her very important tiny nap
Carmen: Sweet dreams, baby Vale 🤍
Flavy: Sleep well, little one.
Alicia: And you too, mama, if you can.
McKenna: Trying 🤍
***
Group Chat: Team Papaya
(Members: Zak Brown, Andrea Stella, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris)
Lando: hi
Zak: Hey buddy. Everything okay?
Andrea: Hello, Lando.
Lando: first of all everyone needs to be calm
Oscar: Historically, nothing calm has ever followed that sentence.
Zak: What happened?
Lando: nothing bad
Lando: technically
Andrea: “Technically” is doing a lot of work here.
Lando: so
Lando: kenna had a baby
Oscar: Sorry?
Zak: What?
Andrea: A baby?
Lando: yes
Lando: surprise
Oscar: Whose baby?
Lando: MINE OSCAR
Oscar: Right. Sorry. I panicked.
Zak: Lando.
Zak: What do you mean McKenna had a baby?
Lando: i mean she had a baby today in hospital with doctors and everything
Andrea: McKenna was pregnant?!
Lando: APPARENTLY
Oscar: Apparently?
Lando: we didn’t know
Zak: You didn’t know?
Lando: no
Oscar: How do you not know?
Lando: OSCAR I DO NOT HAVE AN ANSWER FOR THAT AND EVERYONE KEEPS ASKING ME
Andrea: Is McKenna okay?
Lando: yes she’s okay tired and sore and overwhelmed but okay
Zak: And the baby?
Lando: she’s okay too
Oscar: She?
Lando: yeah
Lando: it’s a girl
Oscar: Mate.
Zak: Congratulations.
Andrea: Congratulations, Lando. And please give our best to McKenna.
Lando: thanks
Lando: also i did not faint
Oscar: That is genuinely impressive.
Zak: Were you expected to faint?
Oscar: Yes.
Lando: RUDE
Andrea: But understandable.
Lando: ANDREA
Andrea: I say this with affection!
Zak: What’s her name?
Lando: Valerie Grace NorrisVale for short
Oscar: Vale?
Oscar: As in—
Lando: do not
Oscar: Silverstone Vale?
Lando: do not make me regret telling you
Zak: Wait.Is this a Silverstone baby?
Oscar: You won Silverstone and immediately made a baby?
Lando: OSCAR
Andrea: This is not how I expected the debrief of the 2025 British Grand Prix to continue.
Zak: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Lando: same
Oscar: Valerie is beautiful.
Lando: yeah
Lando: she’s very small
Oscar: Newborns usually are.
Zak: Do you need anything?
Lando: i don’t know
Lando: probably paternity leave???
Zak: Yes. Obviously.
Lando: i know we have a month break because of the calendar changes but i don’t know what happens after
Andrea: Lando, we will handle the team logistics.
Zak: Family comes first. We’ll work around whatever you and McKenna need.
Lando: are you sure
Zak: Buddy, you just had a surprise baby. Yes, I’m sure.
Oscar: “Surprise baby” is insane phrasing.
Lando: that is literally what happened
Oscar: Fair.
Andrea: We will need to discuss media eventually, but not now.
Lando: thank god
Zak: Not today. Not tomorrow unless you want to. You focus on McKenna and Valerie.
Lando: okay
Oscar: Does McKenna want privacy?
Lando: yes we both do she shared a picture with the girls but that’s it
Oscar: Then nobody else hears it from us.
Andrea: Agreed.
Zak: Of course.
Lando: thank you
Zak: Can we send something? Flowers? Food? Baby things?
Lando: probably yes but maybe not yet kenna is overwhelmed
Andrea: Then we wait. When you are ready, we will ask what is useful.And no giant McLaren-branded baby hamper unless approved.
Lando: thank you
Oscar: There was already a giant McLaren-branded baby hamper idea, wasn’t there?
Zak: No comment.
Andrea: There will be no papaya onesies without parental consent.
Lando: i appreciate that
Oscar: Counterpoint: tiny race suit.
Lando: oscar
Oscar: For later.
Lando: maybe for later
Zak: There it is.
Lando: she would look cute in papaya
Andrea: Naturally.
Oscar: You’re already gone.
Lando: i know
Lando: i looked at her and she yawned and i cried
Oscar: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Zak: That’s beautiful, buddy.
Lando: also terrifying
Andrea: Both can be true.
Lando: i keep thinking like this morning i was just lando and now i’m someone’s dad
Oscar: You were always someone’s Lando. Now you’re also someone’s dad.
Lando: that was too nice
Oscar: Sorry. I’ll insult you shortly.
Zak: You’ll be great.
Lando: what if i’m not
Andrea: Then you learn.
Zak: Exactly. Nobody knows how to do it on day one.
Oscar: Especially when day one arrives without prior notification.
Lando: yeah
Lando: she’s asleep on kenna now and kenna is asleep too and i don’t know what to do with myself
Andrea: Sit with them.
Zak: Take a breath.
Oscar: Maybe put your phone down.
Lando: probably
Oscar: And Lando?
Lando: yeah?
Oscar: Congratulations, mate. Seriously.
Zak: Congratulations to both of you. Welcome to the McLaren family, Valerie Grace.
Andrea: Please tell McKenna we are very happy for you, and that there is no pressure from us. Only support.
Lando: thank you
Lando: really
Lando: okay i’m going to go stare at my baby now
Oscar: Extremely dad sentence.
Lando: blocked
Zak: Go be with your girls.
Lando: my girls
Lando: fuck
Andrea: There it is.
***
Instagram Post: @/Lando
Comments:
@/mclaren: Welcome to the papaya family, Vale 🧡
@/oscarpiastri: Congratulations mate ❤️
@/maxverstappen1: Did not faint. Well done.
@/maxfewtrell: uncle reporting for duty
@/alex_albon: This was not on my 2026 bingo card but congrats mate ❤️
@/charles_leclerc: Congratulations to you both ❤️
@/carlossainz55: Felicidades, mate. Very happy for your family ❤️
@/lilyzneimer: She is perfect 🤍
@/danielricciardo: BABY NORRIS!!! little legend already
@/zakbrownceo: Congratulations to you and McKenna. Welcome to the family, Vale 🧡
@/papaya.poleposition: EXCUSE ME??????????
@/lando4worldchamp: LANDO NORRIS HAS A CHILD??????
@/smoothoperatorrr: I OPENED INSTAGRAM EXPECTING MIAMI CONTENT AND GOT FATHERHOOD
@/formulafever: “arrived unexpectedly” HELLO???? HOW UNEXPECTEDLY????
@/verstappenclipz: THE BABY IS CALLED VALE BECAUSE OF SILVERSTONE VALE CORNER I AM CRYING
@/sector1purple: Lando becoming a dad during the random month break is insane lore 😭
@/f1wagsdaily: VALERIE GRACE NORRIS IS SUCH A PRETTY NAME 😭🤍
@/papayaracingline: McLaren baby era officially activated 🧡
@/teamlh44: Imagine your dad being Lando Norris 😭 this child is going to grow up with unlimited emotional support and chaos
@/norisring: He is going to be OBSESSED with this baby
@/britishgpcore: THE SILVERSTONE 2025 TIMELINE OH MY GODDDDDD
@/tracklimitstragedies: Bro won his home race and immediately made a baby. Unreal scenes.
@/piastriarchives: Someone check on Oscar. There is no way he processed this normally.
@/landoslosttrophy: “both of my girls” yeah okay I’m crying in public now
@/f1chaoscentral: Lando Norris hard-launching fatherhood with a WHOLE NEWBORN was not on my 2026 bingo card
@/lightsoutpodium: “very unexpectedly, very dramatically, and very perfectly” THAT’S HIS DAUGHTER ALRIGHT 😭
@/mclarenclips: Zak Brown is absolutely designing a papaya baby onesie as we speak
@/f1fangirl44: NO ONE SPEAK TO ME. LANDO NORRIS IS A DAD.
@/suzukasector2: WAIT WE LITERALLY JUST SAW MCKENNA IN JAPAN??????
@/papayalightsout: SHE WAS WALKING THROUGH THE PADDOCK LIKE NORMAL TWO DAYS AGO 😭😭😭
@/f1breakfastclub: SHE WAS IN THE GARAGE WEARING JEANS. JEANS!!!!
@/monacopaddock: How did nobody know there was an entire baby in there 😭
@/radioinlap: Cryptic pregnancies are REAL real because WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE WAS JUST IN JAPAN
@/landoismyromanempire: McKenna was literally posting coffee and paddock photos 48 hours ago and now there’s a newborn????
@/pitlanegirlies: No because she looked COMPLETELY normal at Suzuka. I am actually shook.
@/f1teaspill: Someone said Vale got paddock access before birth and I can’t stop laughing
@/gridglamour: The way there was no maternity photoshoot, no announcement, no baby shower, just BOOM BABY
@/pitwallprincess: I JUST REMEMBERED SHE SAID SHE WAS FEELING “OFF” IN A PADDOCK VLOG OH MY GOD
@/f1fangirlcentral: This is genuinely one of the craziest F1 baby reveals ever 😭
@/monacomotion: The Norris family group chat must have looked INSANE
@/lando4everrr: “Very unexpectedly, very dramatically” = understatement of the century
You and Me and Three - Part 1/2
Pairing: Lando Norris x McKenna "Kenna" Hayes (Original Character)
Summary:
McKenna Hayes thinks she has period cramps.
Lando Norris thinks maybe, possibly, his girlfriend needs better painkillers.
Neither of them thinks they’re about to leave the hospital with a baby.
Warnings and Notes:
This author had a cold and watched like 20 episodes of I didn’t know I was pregnant. This was the result. So obviously, secret baby, cryptic pregnancy, childbirth etc. Also if you wanna tell me that this is unbelievable, I know, but it was fun to write. All the stuff that's wrong is totally my fault because my research was limited to said 20 episodes.
Big thanks to @llirawolf and to @leodette, who listen to me ramble about all my ideas and have an unending patience for me 😂
Group Chat: Paddock Support Group
(Members: Alexandra Saint Mleux, Rebecca Donaldson, Lily Zneimer, Flavy Barla, Kika Gomes, Lily Muni He, Alicia Torriani, Isabella Bernadini, Carmen Montero Mundt, Kelly Piquet, McKenna Hayes)
Alexandra: I love race weekends but I am so ready for a month without living out of a suitcase.
Rebecca: Same. Obviously the reason for the break is awful.
Kika: Yeah, it feels weird to be relieved about the time off when the reason is so horrible.
Lily Z: Exactly. Like, I’m grateful to have Oscar home, but not grateful for why.
Carmen: It’s okay to feel both things. The calendar is out of our control.
Flavy: And the boys need rest too. Even if some of them will pretend they don’t.
Kelly: Max said he was going to “relax.” This apparently means sim racing.
Lily MH: Classic.
Isabella: At least he’s sitting down.
Rebecca: Carlos says he’s going to sleep for two days and then immediately started talking about training.
Kika: Pierre said “we should go somewhere quiet” and then sent me three restaurant reservations.
Alexandra: Charles is already playing piano. He has been home for four hours.
McKenna: Lando said he missed me almost as much as he is going to miss his McLaren.
Rebecca: Almost?
McKenna: Let’s be realistic.
Lily Z: He does have a thing for Mcs.
Flavy: McLaren. McKenna.
Alicia: McDonald’s?
McKenna: Unfortunately, also yes.
Kika: Lando Norris: loyal to anything beginning with Mc.
Rebecca: He loves McKenna nearly as much as McLaren.
McKenna: That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said about us.
Rebecca: You’ve been with him since you were what, twelve? You literally know each other since you were 5. I think you win.
Lily MH: Twelve is insane. I had braces and terrible eyeliner.
McKenna: So did Lando.
Rebecca: Lando had eyeliner?
McKenna: He has two younger sisters. Believe me, there is no makeup product he hasn’t tried.
Isabella: Are people already planning Miami? Who is going to be there?
Alexandra: Me.
Carmen: Me. I have already made a list.
Flavy: Of outfits?
Carmen: Restaurants.
Kelly: Correct priorities.
Kika: I want tacos. I want Cuban food. I want everything.
Lily MH: Miami food is genuinely one of the best parts of that weekend.
Isabella: The weather is the worst part.
Alexandra: Miami humidity trying to kill my hair.
Flavy: Worth it for the food.
Isabella: Are we doing padel again this week?
Rebecca: Yes. I need revenge.
Alexandra: You said that last time and then Carlos beat us all.
Rebecca: That is why I need revenge.
Kika: I’m in.
Flavy: Me too.
Lily MH: I can do Thursday?
Alicia: Same.
Lily Z: I’ll come if someone promises not to make me play against Rebecca when she’s competitive.
Rebecca: Coward.
McKenna: I’m out.
Alexandra: Why?
McKenna: Stomach cramps from hell. Probably getting my period.
Kika: Oof. Heating pad and chocolate.
Rebecca: Do you need anything?
McKenna: No, I’m fine. Hot water bottle, hoodie, complaining loudly. The usual.
Lily Z: Lando hoodie?
McKenna: Obviously.
Rebecca: Does Lando know?
McKenna: He is currently making tea and acting like I’ve been mortally wounded.
Kika: That tracks.
Flavy: Tell him we said not to panic.
McKenna: Too late. He asked if cramps can “get dangerous.”
Alicia: Sweet, but stupid.
McKenna: That’s my boyfriend.
***
McKenna had made a nest.
That was what Lando called it, anyway.
She called it basic survival, because her uterus—or whatever angry, internal organ had decided to ruin her afternoon—was currently trying to leave her body through sheer force of spite.
She was curled on the sofa in one of Lando’s oldest McLaren hoodies, knees drawn up, hot water bottle pressed so hard against her stomach that the rubber edge was starting to leave a mark through the fabric. Her hair was shoved into a terrible bun on top of her head. There was a half-empty mug of tea on the coffee table, three different painkillers she was allowed to take, and her Formula One driver boyfriend standing two feet away from her like a meerkat with anxiety.
“Stop hovering,” she muttered.
“I’m not hovering.”
“You are literally standing there watching me breathe.”
“I’m observing.”
“Like a creep.”
“Like a concerned boyfriend.”
McKenna opened one eye and glared at him. “You have been concerned-boyfriending for four hours.”
Lando’s mouth tightened because that was true.
He had started off sweet. Tea, hot water bottle, blanket, hoodie, forehead kisses. Then he had progressed into annoying. Googling things. Asking if she needed toast. Asking if she needed soup. Asking if she needed him to call his mum. Asking if she was sure it was cramps. Asking if cyst pain was meant to make her go that grey.
That had been the wrong thing to say, because then McKenna had thrown a cushion at him and told him that women were allowed to look like death without men making it a group project.
Now, though, even she had to admit it was getting worse.
The cramps had started low and sharp, familiar enough that she had dismissed them immediately. She had dealt with ovarian cysts before. She knew the drill. Sometimes her period arrived like a polite inconvenience. Sometimes they arrived like a biblical punishment.
She had been dealing with that since she was a teenager, long before Lando had even learned how to pretend not to panic when she curled up in pain.
But this was different.
This was deeper.
Meaner.
It built in waves, squeezing tight through her abdomen and wrapping around her back until she couldn’t quite catch her breath. It would ease for a few minutes, just enough for her to unclench her jaw, and then it would come back harder.
She hated that.
She hated the rhythm of it.
She hated that Lando had noticed the rhythm of it too.
“You’re timing them,” she said, voice muffled against the cushion.
Lando froze.
His phone was in his hand.
“No.”
“Lando.”
“I’m not timing them.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
“I’m just…” He looked down at his phone, then back at her, his face doing that awful thing where he tried to look calm and only managed to look more terrified. “They’re coming every few minutes, Ken.”
“They’re cramps.”
“I know.”
“I get bad cramps.”
“I know.”
“I get cysts.”
“I know.”
“You’ve seen me like this before.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I haven’t.”
That made her look at him properly.
He was standing there barefoot, still in the joggers he had changed into when he got home from Japan, curls messy from running his hands through them too many times. He looked young suddenly. Not Formula One driver young. Not media-trained, race-winning, champagne-sprayed young.
Twelve-year-old Lando young.
The boy who had sat outside the girls’ bathroom because McKenna had got her first really awful period and had refused to tell anyone else. The boy who had bought the wrong kind of pads from a petrol station and then cried because he thought she was mad at him. The boy who had always been useless in a crisis for approximately twelve seconds before becoming terrifyingly devoted.
Kenna softened, despite the pain. “Lan,” she said. “I’m okay.”
His eyes dropped to her hand, still clenched white around the hot water bottle.
“No, you’re not.”
Another cramp hit before she could answer.
It took her breath.
She folded forward with a noise she didn’t mean to make, sharp and wounded, fingers digging into the blanket. The pain ripped through her with such force that, for one horrifying second, she genuinely thought she might throw up.
Lando was on his knees in front of her immediately.
“Kenna.”
“Don’t touch me.”
He stopped instantly, hands hovering uselessly in the air.
“Okay,” he said quickly. “Okay, I won’t. I’m here. I’m right here.”
She breathed through it badly because there was no good way to breathe through something that felt like her body was turning itself inside out. Her eyes burned. She hated crying from pain. It felt humiliating.
When the wave finally eased, she slumped back against the sofa, sweaty and shaking.
Lando’s face had gone very still.
She knew that look.
That was the look he got when the joke left the room.
“No,” she said immediately.
He blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re about to.”
“I think we should go to hospital.”
“No.”
“McKenna.”
“No, because they’ll just tell me it’s my period and make me sit there for six hours feeling stupid.”
“I don’t care.”
“I care.”
“I don’t.”
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh, except it hurt too much to be one. “Of course you don’t. You’re not the one who has to explain that your period is being dramatic.”
His jaw tightened.
“Kenna,” he said, gentler now, “you can barely sit up.”
“It’ll pass.”
“It’s been getting worse all day.”
“It does that sometimes.”
“Not like this.”
She looked away.
That was the problem with being loved by someone for over half your life. They had evidence. They had memory. They could tell when you were lying because they had watched you build every version of the mask.
Lando moved closer, still careful not to touch her without permission.
“Maybe it is a cyst,” he said. “Maybe it’s just a really bad one. Maybe they give you something stronger and we come home and I look dramatic and you get to make fun of me forever.”
“I already get to make fun of you forever.”
“Exactly. Think of the new material.”
Her mouth twitched despite herself.
Then another cramp started.
This one made her vision spot.
She grabbed for him without thinking.
Lando caught her hand so fast it was like he had been waiting for permission.
“Oh, baby,” he whispered, and there was fear in his voice now. Real fear. “Okay. That’s it. We’re going.”
“Lando—”
“No.” He squeezed her hand, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to anchor. “No, Kenna. I love you, and you can be angry with me in the car, but we’re going.”
She wanted to argue. She really did.
But her body betrayed her by curling again, another horrible wave taking hold before the last one had even fully gone. A broken sound slipped out of her, and Lando’s expression crumpled.
Not panic this time.
Decision.
He stood up, already moving.
“Shoes,” he said, mostly to himself. “Bag. Phone. Charger. Your ID. Hoodie—no, you’re wearing the hoodie. Okay. Good. Great. Hospital.”
“Lan,” she breathed.
He stopped instantly and looked back.
For a second, she saw it then. How scared he was. How much he was trying not to show her all of it because he knew she’d use his fear as an excuse to minimise her own pain.
Her voice came out small. “Do you think they are gonna give me the good drugs?”
His face softened so quickly it almost hurt worse than the cramps. “Yeah,” he said. “Exactly. We’re going to get you the good drugs.” He came back to the sofa and crouched in front of her again. “Can I help you up?”
McKenna nodded.
Lando slipped one arm around her back and the other under her knees with the careful, reverent focus of someone handling something precious and breakable. She hated needing it. She loved him for not making her ask twice.
As he lifted her, another sharp pulse of pain tore through her lower back.
She buried her face in his neck and swore. Lando kissed the side of her head. “I know,” he murmured. “I know, love. I’ve got you.”
And Kenna, sweating and shaking and furious at her own body, let herself believe him.
Because Lando had always had her.
Since they were kids. Since before race wins and contracts and hotel rooms and paddock passes.
Since before either of them had any idea that, in less than an hour, a doctor would look between them with a very strange expression and ask McKenna a question that would change every part of their lives.
For now, there was only the pain.
The car keys.
Lando’s arms.
And his voice, too steady to be natural, whispering against her hair: “We’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
***
The hospital did something terrible to Lando Norris.
It made him quiet.
McKenna would have preferred the hovering, honestly.
The hovering, she could work with. The hovering was familiar. The hovering was Lando pacing around their living room, making the tea too strong and asking if she needed a blanket every eight seconds. The hovering was annoying enough to make her feel normal.
But this Lando?
This Lando sat beside the examination bed with one hand wrapped around hers, his thumb moving back and forth over her knuckles in a rhythm so controlled it didn’t belong to him. His face had gone pale. His curls were a mess. His leg bounced so fast the chair squeaked.
He looked like he was one breath away from either crying or trying to buy the hospital.
Possibly both.
“I’m okay,” McKenna said, even though she very clearly was not okay.
The cramp—or whatever the hell it was—had finally eased again, leaving her shaky and sweating in one of those horrible hospital gowns that tied at the back and made everyone look like a Victorian ghost.
Lando looked at her. “You are in a hospital bed.”
“Observation bed.”
“That is not better.”
“It sounds less dramatic.”
“You made a noise in the car that I am never recovering from.”
She tried to smile. It didn’t quite land.
His face changed immediately. “Kenna.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”
He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to her knuckles. “I’m trying not to freak out.”
“You’re doing very badly.”
“I know.”
The curtain pulled back before he could say anything else, and the doctor stepped in with a nurse beside her. She was calm in that terrifyingly competent way that made McKenna want to cry with relief and apologize for being inconvenient at the same time.
“Hi, McKenna,” the doctor said gently. “I’m Dr. Shah. I know you’ve already told the nurse a bit, but I’m going to ask you some questions again while we get you assessed, okay?”
McKenna nodded. Lando sat up straighter.
The doctor gave him one quick glance, then smiled kindly. “And you are?”
“Lando,” he said immediately. “Her boyfriend. Partner. I’m—yeah. I’m with her.”
“Okay. You can stay if McKenna wants you here.”
McKenna squeezed his hand. “He stays.”
The doctor nodded. “Good. So, severe abdominal pain, lower abdomen and back. Coming in waves?”
McKenna swallowed. “Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Started earlier today. It’s been getting worse.”
“Any fever? Vomiting? Fainting?”
“No fever. Felt sick, but I haven’t thrown up.”
“Any history of ovarian cysts?”
McKenna let out a humorless laugh. “Unfortunately, yes.”
The doctor’s expression sharpened slightly. “Ruptures before?”
“Multiple times. They usually just tell me to rest and take painkillers unless it gets bad.”
“And this feels similar?”
McKenna hesitated.
Lando’s thumb stopped moving.
“No,” she admitted. “Not really.”
The doctor nodded, like that was useful rather than terrifying.
Then came the question.
“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”
McKenna blinked.
Lando went completely still.
For one second, the room seemed to lose all sound except for the monitor somewhere behind the curtain.
McKenna stared at the doctor. “I’m on the pill,” she said.
“Okay.”
“And my periods are always irregular. Like, very irregular. Because of the cysts and hormones and everything.”
“That can happen.”
“I’ve had spotting. I think. I mean, maybe? My cycle is stupid. It’s always been stupid.”
The doctor remained calm. “When was your last proper period?”
McKenna opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Her brain reached backwards through months of flights, races, hotels, Japan, Australia, Bahrain, pre-season, Christmas, late nights, stress, her body doing weird things it always did. She tried to find a date and found nothing solid.
Lando looked at her.
Not accusing. Never accusing. Just frightened.
“Kenna?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and hated how small her voice sounded. “I don’t know. But I’m on the pill.”
The doctor nodded again. “The pill is very effective when taken correctly, but no contraception is perfect. With this kind of pain, we do need to rule it out. Especially because severe one-sided pain can sometimes indicate an ectopic pregnancy.”
Lando’s face drained of what little colour it had left.
“Ectopic,” he repeated.
The nurse glanced at him. “A pregnancy outside the womb. It can be serious, but we’re just checking possibilities.”
“Serious like—”
“Lando,” McKenna said sharply, because his voice had cracked.
He shut up instantly.
The doctor’s tone stayed steady. “We’re going to do a pregnancy test and an ultrasound. That will give us more information. Right now, the important thing is that she’s here and we’re assessing her.”
Lando nodded too many times.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Good. Assessing. That’s good.”
McKenna would have laughed if she hadn’t been busy trying not to fold in half again.
Another wave started low in her belly, a brutal tightening that made her grip Lando’s hand so hard he winced and then immediately looked guilty for wincing.
“Sorry,” she gasped.
“No, break it,” he said. “I’ve got another one.”
The doctor moved quickly.
“Breathe through it for me, McKenna. Slow if you can.”
“I am trying,” McKenna snapped, then immediately wanted to apologize.
Dr. Moreau did not look offended. “I know.”
The pain climbed, peaked, held.
McKenna made a sound she didn’t recognize.
Lando leaned over her, panic barely leashed. “Look at me. Kenna, look at me. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
“I am not okay.”
“No, yeah, fair. Stupid thing to say. You’re doing amazing. Is that better?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
And somehow, absurdly, that did make her laugh.
Just a little.
Just enough.
Then the pain loosened.
The nurse had already returned with equipment. The next few minutes blurred into tests, questions, gloved hands, a blood pressure cuff tightening around McKenna’s arm, Lando trying to stay out of the way and failing because every time someone touched McKenna he leaned forward like a golden retriever about to intervene.
Then the urine test came back.
The doctor looked at it.
Then at McKenna.
Then at Lando.
Her face remained professionally neutral, but her voice gentled.
“McKenna, the pregnancy test is positive.”
McKenna stopped breathing.
Lando made a noise.
Not a word.
Just a tiny, strangled sound from the back of his throat.
“No,” McKenna whispered.
“Okay,” Lando said immediately, except it sounded like his soul had left his body. “Okay. Positive. Pregnant. Okay.”
“No,” McKenna said again, louder this time. “No, I can’t be. I’m on the pill.”
“I understand.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I believe you.”
“I didn’t—Lando, I didn’t know.”
Lando’s chair scraped violently as he stood, leaning over her, both hands around hers now.
“Hey. Hey, no. I know. Kenna, I know. Of course I know.”
Her eyes burned.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know,” he said, voice breaking. “I know, baby.”
The doctor waited a moment before speaking again.
“Given the pain, we need to do the ultrasound now to see where the pregnancy is and what’s happening.”
Lando looked up.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we need more information.”
Which McKenna quickly learned was doctor language for: we are not going to scare you until we know which nightmare this is.
She appreciated it.
She also hated it.
They moved her. Or maybe they brought the machine in. She wasn’t entirely sure. Everything had narrowed to Lando’s hand and the terrifying, impossible word still echoing in her skull.
Pregnant.
Pregnant.
Pregnant.
Except she couldn’t be pregnant.
She would have known.
Wouldn’t she?
Surely she would have known.
She thought of being tired for months and blaming travel. Feeling nauseous and blaming hotel food. Her jeans getting uncomfortable and blaming bloating. Crying over an advert with a dog and blaming PMS. Lando joking that she had become emotionally attached to jacket potatoes. Her breasts hurting. Her back aching. The weird pressure she had ignored because her body was always weird and she had learned, years ago, that doctors didn’t always take women’s pain seriously unless you arrived with evidence and even then sometimes not.
The doctor dimmed the room slightly.
“This may be uncomfortable,” she warned.
“Everything is uncomfortable,” McKenna said faintly.
Lando laughed once, badly.
The ultrasound began.
For several seconds, no one said anything.
The doctor’s eyes moved over the screen.
The nurse leaned in.
McKenna stared at their faces.
Lando stared at the screen like he could understand it through sheer terror.
Then Dr. Moreau went very, very still.
McKenna felt Lando notice.
“What?” he said immediately. “What is it?”
The doctor didn’t answer him right away. She adjusted the probe, pressed lower.
McKenna hissed.
“Sorry,” the doctor murmured.
Another wave of pain hit.
Hard.
McKenna’s whole body tightened.
“Oh my God,” she cried, and this time there was no pretending it was just cramps, no dignity left to preserve.
The nurse’s hand went to her shoulder. “Breathe, McKenna.”
Lando looked between her and the doctor, wild-eyed.
“What is happening?”
Dr. Moreau looked up.
Her expression had changed. Not frightened, exactly. Not panicked.
Urgent.
“McKenna,” she said carefully, “you’re not having an ectopic pregnancy.”
McKenna barely heard her through the pain.
Lando did.
His shoulders dropped half an inch.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay, good. That’s good, right?”
The doctor took one breath.
“You’re much further along than we expected.”
McKenna stared at her.
The room tilted.
“What?”
The doctor’s voice stayed calm, but there was no softness that could make the words normal.
“You’re in labour.”
For one perfect, impossible second, nobody moved.
Then Lando said, very clearly: “What?”
McKenna’s heart slammed into her ribs. “No.”
The doctor nodded gently. “I know this is a shock.”
“No,” McKenna repeated, because apparently that was the only word she had left. “No, I’m not—no. Labour is—no. That’s babies.”
“Yes,” the doctor said.
Lando’s mouth opened.
Closed. Opened again.
“Sorry,” he said, sounding like he had been concussed. “Sorry, what?”
The nurse was already moving. “I’m going to get obstetrics.”
“Obstetrics?” Lando echoed.
“Yes.”
“Because of the labour?”
“Yes.”
“The baby labour?”
The nurse paused for half a second.
“Yes.”
Lando turned back to McKenna, his face utterly blank with shock.
“Kenna.”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“I can’t be in labour.”
“I—” He looked at the doctor, helpless. “Can she not be in labour?”
Dr. Moreau’s mouth softened, just slightly. “I’m afraid she is.”
Lando nodded.
Once.
Very slowly.
“Right.”
Then he sat down.
Immediately.
Hard.
The chair made a horrible scraping noise against the floor.
McKenna would have laughed if she weren’t busy staring at the ceiling wondering if she had died in Japan and this was some bizarre afterlife punishment.
Lando put both hands over his face.
“Okay,” he said into them. “Okay. Labour. Baby. Our baby?”
McKenna made a tiny wounded noise.
His hands dropped instantly.
“No, no, no, I’m not questioning—obviously our baby. I just meant—Jesus Christ. Baby. We’re having a baby?”
The doctor, who deserved an award for not reacting to any of this, said, “Yes.”
“Today?”
“Very likely, yes.”
Lando looked like someone had just told him the laws of physics had been cancelled.
“Today,” he repeated.
McKenna’s voice cracked. “Lando.”
He was on his feet again instantly, leaning over her, all the shock on his face giving way to something raw and terrified and devoted.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m here.”
“I’m scared.”
His eyes filled.
“I know.”
“I didn’t know,” she said again, because it mattered. It mattered more than anything. “I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
Lando bent and pressed his forehead to hers.
“Kenna,” he whispered, voice shaking. “I know. I know you didn’t. I was there. I didn’t know either.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Another contraction started.
Contraction.
Not cramp.
Contraction.
The word was so absurd it almost made her angry.
“Oh God,” she gasped.
Lando’s hand tightened around hers.
“What do I do?” he asked the doctor, panic rising again. “Tell me what to do.”
“For now? Stay with her. Help her breathe. Let us work.”
He nodded, suddenly focused like someone had given him a race strategy he could follow.
“Okay. I can do that.”
“You are going to pass out,” McKenna managed.
“I am absolutely not.”
“You look green.”
“I’m emotionally green. Physically fine.”
The nurse returned with more people. The room started moving around them. Names, voices, instructions, someone telling McKenna they were going to transfer her, someone asking more questions she didn’t know how to answer.
How many weeks?
She didn’t know.
Any prenatal care?
No, because she hadn’t known.
Any complications?
Apparently the complication was that she had arrived at hospital thinking she had ovarian cyst pain and was now, with zero warning, about to become someone’s mother.
Lando stayed glued to her side.
Still freaking the fuck out.
But there.
Always there.
At one point, while they were being wheeled through a corridor far too bright for the occasion, he leaned close and whispered, “Do we need a car seat?”
McKenna turned her head very slowly and stared at him.
He swallowed.
“Not important right now?”
“No.”
“Right. Later problem.”
“Lando.”
“Yeah?”
“If you google anything, I will break up with you during childbirth.”
He nodded solemnly. “Completely fair.”
Then, after three seconds:
“Can I text Max?”
“No.”
“Oscar?”
“No.”
“My mum?”
McKenna’s face crumpled.
That one hit differently.
Lando saw it immediately.
“Oh, baby,” he whispered.
“I don’t have anything,” she said, the words suddenly tumbling out between breaths. “I don’t have clothes. I don’t have a crib. I don’t have—Lando, we don’t even have nappies.”
His own fear flickered. Then hardened into love.
“We’ll get it.”
“But—”
“We’ll get all of it,” he said fiercely. “All of it. Today, tomorrow, whenever. I don’t care. We’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t know how to be a mum.”
His face broke.
“Kenna,” he said, and now he was crying, properly, silently, tears slipping down his cheeks while he tried to be steady for her. “I don’t know how to be a dad.”
That made something in her chest hurt worse than the contractions.
He kissed her hand.
“But it’s you and me, yeah?” he whispered. “It’s always been you and me.”
She stared at him, terrified and sweating and in labour with a baby she hadn’t known existed an hour ago.
Then she nodded.
“It’s you and me.”
Lando pressed another kiss to her knuckles.
“And apparently,” he said, voice wobbling, “someone else.”
McKenna let out a sob that might have been a laugh.
Because of course.
Of course this was how they found out.
Not with a test in a bathroom.
Not with a scan picture held between trembling hands.
Not with time to plan, or think, or prepare.
But with Lando Norris in a hospital room looking like his entire brain had been blue-screened, whispering “what” every few minutes, while McKenna tried to breathe through the sudden, impossible arrival of their whole future.
Their baby.
Their baby.
God.
Lando looked down at her, eyes wide and wet and terrified.
“Kenna?”
“What?”
“I love you.”
She closed her eyes.
“I love you too.”
“And I’m freaking the fuck out.”
“I know.”
“But I’m here.”
She held on to his hand like it was the only real thing in the room.
“I know.”
***
Group Chat: Norris Family Chaos
(Members: Mum, Dad, Oliver, Lando, Flo, Cisca)
Lando: I NEED EVERYONE TO NOT PANIC
Flo: That is literally the worst possible way to start a message.
Oliver: What did you do?
Dad: Are you alright?
Mum: Lando?
Lando: I AM ALRIGHT KENNA IS ALRIGHT KINDA I THINK SHE’S IN HOSPITAL
Mum: What?
Dad: What happened?
Cisca: Is she okay??
Flo: LANDO.
Lando: SHE HAD REALLY BAD STOMACH PAIN LIKE REALLY BAD I TOOK HER TO HOSPITAL THEY THOUGHT MAYBE CYST OR SOMETHING OR ECTOPIC PREGNANCY
Mum: Pregnancy?
Oliver: Sorry what
Flo: ECTOPIC?????
Cisca: Lando what do you mean pregnancy?
Lando: I DON’T KNOW THAT’S WHAT I SAID I SAID WHAT SEVERAL TIMES ACTUALLY
Dad: Breathe, son.
Lando: I AM BREATHING NOT WELL Mum: Is McKenna pregnant?
Lando: YES APPARENTLY BUT ALSO NOT LIKE NORMAL PREGNANT
Flo: What does “not normal pregnant” mean???
Lando: IT MEANS SHE IS IN LABOUR
Oliver: Sorry
Oliver: Sorry what
Cisca: LABOUR?????
Mum: Lando.
Dad: As in having a baby?
Lando: YES DAD AS IN HAVING A BABY THE BABY KIND OF LABOUR
Flo: WHAT THE FUCK
Mum: Flo.
Flo: MUM THIS IS A WHAT THE FUCK SITUATION.
Oliver: How is she in labour????
Lando: I DON’T KNOW OLIVER I WAS NOT CONSULTED BY THE UNIVERSE
Cisca: But we saw her at Christmas.
Mum: She didn’t have a bump at Christmas.
Dad: She looked perfectly normal.
Flo: She wore that silver dress at New Year’s. There was no bump.
Lando: I KNOW
Cisca: She went ice skating with us.
Lando: I KNOW
Flo: She sat on your lap because there weren’t enough chairs.
Lando: I KNOW
Oliver: Mate, your girlfriend was pregnant and sitting on you and you didn’t notice?
Lando: OLIVER I AM ABOUT TO BECOME A FATHER WITH ZERO WARNING MAYBE DON’T MAKE THIS ABOUT MY OBSERVATION SKILLS
Mum: Does McKenna know how far along she is?
Lando: NO SHE DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS PREGNANT SHE’S ON THE PILL HER PERIODS ARE ALWAYS WEIRD SHE HAS CYSTS SHE THOUGHT IT WAS THAT
Dad: Okay. Then nobody did anything wrong.
Lando: I KNOW BUT ALSO HOW DID I NOT KNOW
Flo: Because she didn’t know either, idiot.
Cisca: Is she scared?
Lando: YES I AM SCARED SHE IS SCARED EVERYONE IS VERY CALM EXCEPT ME THE DOCTORS ARE GREAT THEY KEEP SAYING THINGS LIKE “unexpected but manageable” WHICH IS A HORRIBLE PHRASE
Oliver: Unexpected but manageable is actually pretty good.
Lando: IT IS NOT GOOD WHEN THE UNEXPECTED THING IS A BABY
Mum: Are you with her now?
Lando: YES SHE TOLD ME IF I GOOGLE ANYTHING SHE WILL BREAK UP WITH ME DURING CHILDBIRTH
Flo: Valid.
Cisca: Extremely valid.
Dad: Do not Google.
Lando: I HAVE NOT GOOGLED I TEXTED YOU INSTEAD WHICH MAY HAVE BEEN WORSE
Mum: What do you need?
Lando: I DON’T KNOW A CAR SEAT??? NAPPIES???? A HOUSE??? DO BABIES NEED SPECIAL TOWELS??? WHY ARE THERE SO MANY KINDS OF BOTTLES DO I HAVE TO BUY ALL OF THEM
Flo: Do not buy all the bottles.
Oliver: Definitely buy a car seat.
Cisca: Do you even have baby clothes?
Lando: NO CISCA FUNNILY ENOUGH I DID NOT PACK NEWBORN CLOTHES FOR MY GIRLFRIEND’S OVARIAN CYST EMERGENCY
Mum: Lando, listen to me. We will sort the practical things.
Dad: Tell us the hospital. We’ll come.
Lando: I don’t know if she wants everyone here yet
Mum: Then we wait nearby.
Flo: I can bring clothes. For Kenna and the baby.
Cisca: I can get the car seat.
Lando: How do you know what car seat to get???
Cisca: I don’t. I will ask someone less useless.
Dad: I’ll call ahead and check what the hospital recommends.
Lando: Okay Okay that’s good That’s helpful Thank you
Mum: How is McKenna right now?
Lando: In pain But being Kenna about it She apologized to the doctor for “being inconvenient” and I nearly started crying
Flo: Oh, Kenna.
Cisca: Tell her we love her.
Mum: Tell her none of this is her fault.
Lando: I did She keeps saying she didn’t know
Dad: Then keep telling her you know.
Lando: I am I keep saying it I think she believes me But she’s so scared
Mum: Of course she is.
Lando: Mum
Mum: Yes, sweetheart?
Lando: What if I’m bad at this
Flo: Oh Lan.
Oliver: Mate.
Dad: You won’t be.
Lando: You don’t know that
Dad: I know you.
Mum: You’ve loved that girl since you were a kid. You know how to show up. That is the first thing a baby needs.
Cisca: Also you are already very good at being obsessed.
Lando: That was almost sweet
Cisca: It was meant to be.
Flo: Wait.
Flo: Lando.
Lando: WHAT
Flo: You’re going to be a dad today.
Lando: PLEASE DON’T SAY IT LIKE THAT
Oliver: Father Lando.
Lando: I will block you
Dad: Don’t antagonize him.
Oliver: Sorry. Emotional support only.
Cisca: Uncle Oliver is already failing.
Oliver: UNCLE OLIVER?????
Flo: AUNTIE FLO?????
Cisca: AUNTIE CISCA?????
Lando: STOP DISCOVERING YOUR OWN TITLES IN MY CRISIS
Mum: Grandma.
Dad: Grandad.
Lando: Oh my god
Lando: Oh my god
Lando: I’m going to be sick
Mum: Sit down.
Lando: I am already sitting
Dad: Head between your knees if you need to.
Flo: Do not pass out in front of Kenna.
Lando: I AM TRYING VERY HARD NOT TO
Cisca: Tell McKenna we are so proud of her.
Lando: I will
Oliver: And tell her the baby already has the most insane birth story in the family.
Flo: In the family? In Formula One.
Lando: DO NOT SAY FORMULA ONE I HAVEN’T TOLD ZAK I HAVEN’T TOLD OSCAR I HAVEN’T TOLD ANYONE
Dad: You don’t need to tell anyone yet.
Mum: Just stay with McKenna.
Lando: Okay
Lando: Contraction again
Lando: I have to go
Mum: We love you.
Dad: We’re here.
Flo: Tell Kenna we love her.
Cisca: And that she’s amazing.
Oliver: You’ve got this, mate.
Lando: I absolutely do not
***
Text Messages: Lando Norris & Max Verstappen
Lando: MAX
Lando: MAX PLEASE ANSWER
Lando: THIS IS AN EMERGENCY
Max: Are you okay?
Lando: NO
Max: Is McLaren on fire?
Lando: NO
Max: Did you crash something?
Lando: NO
Max: Then why are you shouting at me
Lando: MCKENNA IS HAVING A BABY
Max: Sorry?
Lando: A BABY
Lando: LIKE A HUMAN ONE
Max: What the fuck mate
Lando: I KNOW
Max: McKenna is pregnant?
Lando: APPARENTLY
Max: Apparently?
Lando: WE DIDN’T KNOW
Max: How do you not know
Lando: DO YOU THINK I HAVE THAT ANSWER MAX DO YOU THINK I AM HIDING IT FROM YOU
Max: She is in labour now?
Lando: YES
Max: And you found out today?
Lando: WE FOUND OUT LIKE FORTY MINUTES AGO
Max: What the fuck.
Lando: YES THAT HAS BEEN COVERED
Max: Is she okay?
Lando: SHE IS IN PAIN AND SCARED AND VERY ANGRY AT HER OWN BODY AND SHE KEEPS SAYING SHE DIDN’T KNOW
Max: You told her you know, yes?
Lando: YES
Max: Good. Keep doing that.
Lando: OKAY
Lando: WHAT ELSE
Max: What do the doctors say?
Lando: THE DOCTORS ARE GOOD THEY THOUGHT ECTOPIC THEN ULTRASOUND THEN SURPRISE BABY TODAY APPARENTLY
Max: Jesus.
Lando: YOU JUST HAD A KID WITH KELLY YOU KNOW BABY THINGS
Max: I knew months before.
Lando: NOT HELPING
Max: I am saying this is a bit different.
Lando: MAX I AM ONE BAD THOUGHT AWAY FROM PASSING OUT PLEASE BE USEFUL
Max: Okay. Sit down.
Lando: I AM SITTING
Max: Do not google anything.
Lando: KENNA ALREADY THREATENED TO BREAK UP WITH ME IF I GOOGLE DURING CHILDBIRTH
Max: She is correct. Stay with her. Listen to the doctors. Do not make your panic her problem.
Lando: I AM TRYING MY PANIC IS QUITE LARGE
Max: Then put it somewhere else.
Lando: WHERE
Max: Text me.
Lando: OH
Lando: THAT IS ACTUALLY VERY NICE
Max: Yes. Unfortunately.
Lando: I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING
Max: What do you mean?
Lando: I MEAN I HAVE NOTHING NO CAR SEAT NO BABY CLOTHES NO NAPPIES NO LITTLE HAT DO BABIES NEED HATS THEY ALWAYS HAVE HATS
Max: Yes, probably.
Lando: PROBABLY?
Max: Mate I did not personally design the baby.
Lando: YOU HAVE ONE
Max: Kelly knows more.
Lando: CAN YOU ASK KELLY
Max: She is feeding the baby.
Lando: ASK HER AFTER OR DURING NO DON’T INTERRUPT HER BUT ALSO PLEASE ASK HER I AM SORRY
Max: I will ask her.
Lando: THANK YOU
Max: Your family can get things. You do not need all of it now.
Lando: WHAT DO I NEED NOW
Max: McKenna.
Lando: MAX
Max: I am serious.
Lando: I KNOW BUT THAT MADE ME EMOTIONAL AND I DON’T HAVE TIME
Max: You need to be with her. The things can come later. Babies need a safe way home, clothes, nappies, somewhere to sleep. But tonight? Doctors, McKenna, baby. That is it.
Lando: Okay
Lando: Okay
Lando: I can do that
Max: Yes.
Lando: What if I can’t
Max: You can.
Lando: YOU DON’T KNOW THAT
Max: I know you are annoying about people you love.
Max: You have loved McKenna since you were children. You will be annoying about this baby too.
Lando: I’m so scared
Max: Good.
Lando: GOOD?????
Max: It means you care.
Lando: I CARE SO MUCH I MAY VOMIT
Max: Try not to do that near McKenna.
Lando: I KNOW
Max: Also do not say “calm down” to her.
Lando: I WOULD NEVER
Max: Good.
Lando: I said “you’re okay” and she said “I am not okay” and honestly fair
Max: Say “I’m here” instead.
Lando: That’s good
Lando: Writing that down mentally
Max: Do not actually write it down. Be present.
Lando: RIGHT
Lando: PRESENT
Lando: I CAN PRESENT
Max: Can you?
Lando: NO BUT I WILL TRY
Max: Good enough.
Max: Also tell people after McKenna says okay.
Lando: Yes
Lando: Obviously
Lando: God I haven’t even thought about press
Max: Don’t.
Lando: But—
Max: No.
Lando: Zak will—
Max: No.
Lando: McLaren will—
Max: No.
Lando: The internet—
Max: Lando.
Lando: Right. No.
Max: Today you are not a Formula One driver. You are McKenna’s partner. And a dad.
Lando: Don’t say it
Max: You are a dad.
Lando: MAX
Max: You need to hear it.
Lando: I’M GOING TO CRY
Max: Then cry. Just not louder than McKenna.
Lando: THAT IS HORRIBLE ADVICE BUT ALSO GOOD ADVICE
Max: Exactly.
Lando: She’s having another contraction
Lando: Okay
Lando: Thanks
Max: Text when baby is here.
Lando: Baby
Lando: Jesus Christ
Max: And Lando? Do not faint.
Lando: NO PROMISES
***
Group Chat: Paddock Support Group
(Members: Alexandra Saint Mleux, Rebecca Donaldson, Lily Zneimer, Flavy Barla, Kika Gomes, Lily Muni He, Alicia Torriani, Isabella Bernadini, Kelly Piquet, Carmen Montero Mundt, McKenna Hayes)
Kelly: What the hell.
Alexandra: ?
Rebecca: That feels ominous.
Kika: Kelly, babe, context.
Kelly: Max just came into the nursery holding his phone like it personally attacked him.
Flavy: That sounds like Max.
Lily Muni: What happened?
Kelly: Lando texted him.
Lily Z: That also sounds like Lando.
Kelly: McKenna is in hospital.
Alexandra: What?
Rebecca: Is she okay?
Carmen: Kenna???
Flavy: Wait, she said, cramps earlier.
Isabella: Oh my god.
Lily Z: Is it the cysts again?
Kelly: No.
Kelly: Apparently not.
Lily Z: Kelly.
Rebecca: Do not make us guess.
Kelly: She is in labour.
Alexandra: I’m sorry?
Kika: LABOUR?
Flavy: As in baby labour?
Kelly: Yes.
Rebecca: WHAT
Lily Muni: No.
Alicia: No way.
Isabella: She’s pregnant?!
Kelly: Apparently she did not know.
Kika: SHE DIDN’T KNOW???
Alexandra: But she was just texting us.
Rebecca: She literally said period cramps.
Lily Z: She said stomach cramps from hell.
Flavy: Oh my god.
Alicia: I thought she meant, like, normal horrifying cramps.
Carmen: Oh my god.
Lily Muni: Wait. She was pregnant in Japan?!
Kelly: Max said Lando is not coherent.
Rebecca: Lando is never coherent.
Kelly: Less coherent than usual.
Isabella: That is a medical emergency by itself.
Kika: I feel sick.
Flavy: Is Kenna okay?
Kelly: Max said the doctors are good and she is scared but okay.
Lily Z: Poor Kenna.
Rebecca: She must be terrified.
Alexandra: She kept saying earlier that she was fine.
Kika: Of course she did. She always does that.
Alicia: Does she want us there?
Kelly: I don’t think Lando knows what he wants, let alone what McKenna wants.
Lily Muni: Fair.
Rebecca: Should we text her?
Alexandra: Maybe not all at once.
Kika: I want to text her.
Flavy: Same, but she’s literally in labour.
Isabella: Maybe one person texts and says we love her, no pressure to answer.
Kelly: Good idea.
Lily Z: I can do it.
Carmen: Tell her we love her and she doesn’t have to reply.
Kika: And that we’re not asking questions.
Alicia: And that she did nothing wrong.
Alexandra: Yes. Especially that.
Lily Z: Writing now.
Lily Z: “Kenna, we heard from Kelly/Max/Lando. Please don’t answer. We love you so much, you’ve done nothing wrong, and we’re here for absolutely anything.” Is that okay?
Kelly: Perfect.
Rebecca: Perfect.
Lily Z: Sent.
Flavy: I cannot believe this.
Rebecca: We saw her in Japan.
Alexandra: She was wearing that oversized white shirt.
Kika: And Lando’s hoodie half the weekend.
Lily Muni: Which is normal for her.
Alicia: She’s always in his clothes.
Isabella: How far along is she?
Kelly: Lando apparently asked Max if babies need hats.
Rebecca: So no useful information then.
Kelly: None.
Kika: They do need hats though.
Flavy: Not the point, Kika.
Kika: I KNOW BUT THEY DO.
Lily Z: Oh my god she replied.
Alexandra: What?
Rebecca: She replied during labour?
Lily Z: She sent: “tell everyone lando is banned from google and if any of you tell the press before I get drugs I will haunt you”
Kika: That’s our girl.
Rebecca: Good. She’s still Kenna.
Kelly: Max just asked me what newborns need “immediately immediately.”
Alicia: Max is consulting you?
Kelly: Yes. While holding our Lily like a football and looking haunted.
Alexandra: Poor Max.
Kelly: Poor me. I am apparently now the emergency baby hotline.
Lily MH: To be fair, you are the most recently qualified.
Kelly: I had warning.
Flavy: Small advantage.
Rebecca: Massive advantage.
Kika: Okay. Practical list. We can help.
Alexandra: Car seat.
Rebecca: Newborn clothes.
Lily MH: Nappies.
Alicia: Wipes.
Isabella: Blanket.
Carmen: Things for McKenna too. She went in for cramps, not labour. She won’t have a hospital bag.
Kelly: Yes. Comfortable clothes. Big underwear. Toiletries. Hair ties. Phone charger. Snacks for after.
Kika: I can do snacks.
Rebecca: You cannot bring only snacks.
Kika: I can bring excellent snacks.
Alexandra: I can organize clothes.
Lily Z: Lando’s family is probably already doing some of this.
Kelly: Good. Then we don’t overwhelm. We can coordinate after.
Isabella: Do we know if it’s a boy or girl?
Kelly: No.
Kika: Imagine finding out you’re pregnant and the gender on the same day.
Rebecca: Imagine finding out you’re pregnant and then immediately needing to push.
Alexandra: Rebecca.
Rebecca: Sorry. Spiraling.
Lily MH: We all are.
Alicia: Should someone check on Lando?
Kelly: Max is doing that.
Kika: Max Verstappen, emotional support doula.
Rebecca: That is the worst phrase I’ve ever read.
Alexandra: And somehow accurate.
Kelly: He told Lando not to make his panic McKenna’s problem.
Lily Z: That’s actually good advice.
Isabella: Very good advice.
Alicia: Who knew Max would be useful here?
Kika: No one is having a normal day.
Lily Z: McKenna just sent another message.
Rebecca: During labour???
Lily Z: “also tell kika if she says mcbaby I will never speak to her again”
Kika: I WAS NOT GOING TO SAY IT.
Flavy: You absolutely were.
Kika: I WAS THINKING IT RESPECTFULLY.
Kelly: Do not say McBaby to a woman in labour.
Kika: Noted.
Alexandra: I’m crying a little.
Rebecca: Same.
Alicia: Same.
Isabella: This is so scary but also so them somehow.
Lily MH: Only Lando and McKenna could accidentally have a baby with no announcement, no bump, no preparation, and still somehow involve half the paddock group chat within an hour.
Kelly: Max says Lando has now asked if newborns can wear McLaren merch.
Rebecca: Absolutely not.
Kika: That baby is five minutes from being sponsored.
Flavy: McKenna will murder him.
Lily Z: She should.
Kelly: I told Max to tell him: plain cotton first, branding later.
Alexandra: Kelly, you are doing a national service.
Kelly: I would like a nap.
Alicia: You have earned one.
Lily Z: Another message from Kenna.
Kika: HOW IS SHE TEXTING?
Lily Z: I think she is between contractions and furious.
Rebecca: That tracks.
Lily Z: She said: “if any of you come to hospital do not bring cameras, flowers, or pity. bring deodorant and maybe chocolate.”
Kelly: Practical queen.
Alexandra: I’ll make a list.
Rebecca: I have deodorant.
Kika: I have chocolate.
Flavy: Of course you do.
Carmen: I can bring soft clothes.
Kelly: Wait for Lando’s family to confirm what they need. But yes.
Lily MH: Does anyone else feel like Miami planning has been aggressively cancelled?
Rebecca: Miami can wait.
Kika: The baby cannot, apparently.
Kelly: Kika.
Kika: SORRY.
Lily Z: McKenna just heart-reacted to my message.
Alexandra: Okay. Good.
Rebecca: She knows we love her.
Kelly: That’s what matters.
Flavy: And Lando?
Kelly: Max says Lando is crying but still upright.
Alicia: Progress.
Kika: Tell Max to tell him we’re proud.
Kelly: I’m not telling Max that. He’ll make a face.
Rebecca: Tell him anyway.
Kelly: Fine.
Kelly: Update: Max said “he is being very annoying but yes.”
Lily Z: That means proud in Max.
Alexandra: Exactly.
Isabella: Oh god.
Flavy: What?
Isabella: We’re all going to be aunties, aren’t we?
Kika: AUNTIE WAGS.
McKenna: I can see this chat you absolute lunatics
Kika: KENNA?????
Rebecca: WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Alexandra: Do not answer us.
Kelly: Put the phone down.
McKenna: lando is asking the doctor if babies come with documentation
Lily MH: I’m sorry.
Alicia: Documentation?
McKenna: like warranty paperwork apparently
Rebecca: I am crying.
Kika: I love him.
McKenna: I am going to kill him after this
Kelly: That is healthy. Very normal.
McKenna: also I love you all do not make me emotional I am busy
Lily Z: We love you too.
Alexandra: So much.
Flavy: You’ve got this.
Isabella: We’re here.
Carmen: Anything you need.
Kika: No McBaby jokes. Promise.
McKenna: good
McKenna: fuck
McKenna: gotta go
Kelly: Breathe, sweetheart.
Rebecca: We love you.
***
System Failure - Chapter 74: Monaco
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: This chapter contains major character injury, graphic portrayal of injuries and graphic portrayal of a crash in Formula 1. FINANCIAL CRIMES! Some Journalists just suck!
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it!
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 5 October 2025
Ana gave up on sleep at 03: 37.
Not dramatically.
Not with tears, or some cinematic surrender to exhaustion.
There was no gasp, no violent waking, no cinematic upright bolt in the darkness.
Just the slow, miserable recognition that her body had mistaken exhaustion for permission to replay things she had no interest in revisiting.
By the third time she surfaced from the same fractured sequence of images—flash, blood, castle walls, screaming, carbon fibre splintering—she stopped pretending the night could still be salvaged.
Beside her, Max slept on.
Of course he did.
One arm flung across the bed, breathing slow and even, entirely untroubled by the fact that her brain had apparently decided that night was now for reliving everything she least wanted replayed in high definition.
Ana lay on her back for another minute anyway, staring at the ceiling.
No.
Absolutely not.
She slid out of bed carefully, mindful of the cast, the healing shoulder, the complicated geometry of sharing a bed with an injured driver, and padded downstairs in one of the new sensory-safe shirts and sleep shorts, hair loose over her shoulders.
The house was quiet.
The kind of quiet that made every thought louder.
Fine, she thought.
If sleep was refusing to behave, she would do something useful instead.
That had always been the problem, really. Her mind did not like being idle in the dark. If it could not have peace, it preferred structure.
Tea first. Then structure.
Once the tea was acquired, right there, on the dining table, glowing innocently in the dim light from the monitor, sat Max’s laptop.
Ana stopped.
Looked at it.
Then narrowed her eyes.
Because there were, as she had learned over the last months, certain things Max approached with rigor, obsession, and terrifying precision.
Racing. Training. Telemetry. Cats. Her.
And then there were other things he handled with the faith of a medieval peasant leaving a goat tied outside a castle and assuming nobility would sort it out.
His finances, apparently, belonged to the second category.
Her brain had already made the choice long before the rest of her admitted it. She reached for Max’s laptop.
She opened it, entered the password she absolutely should not have known and did.
The desktop was appalling.
Folders with names like stuff, car, important maybe, and one simply titled Sven.
Ana stared at it for a long moment.
Then opened the folder titled Sven.
PDFs.
A graveyard of unread PDFs.
PDFs with names like FINAL_v3_ACTUAL.pdf and Investment_Review_Q4.pdf and SponsorshipForecast_Updated2_REAL.xlsm.
Ana stared at the screen.
Then, very quietly, said to the empty kitchen, “You live like this.”
Jimmy, who had appeared somewhere around the making of tea and was now loafed on one of the dining chairs as if to supervise, blinked at her.
“Yes,” she said to him. “I know.”
Investment summaries. Portfolio reviews. End-of-quarter updates. Sponsor revenue projections. Tax planning briefs. Race team expenditure allocations. A memo with formatting so offensive she briefly considered it a hostile act.
Ana opened the first summary.
Read the first page.
Then the second.
Then sat back very slowly in her chair.
“Oh,” she said aloud to the empty room.
Not because she was surprised Sven was bad.
She had known Sven was bad.
She had confirmed that months ago, when she and Max had bought the house. That had been enough to tell her Sven was mediocre, under-rigorous, and far too pleased with himself for a man whose diversification strategy appeared to be mostly decorative.
Sven had seemed mediocre then.
Now, with a bunch of PDF open, Ana upgraded her assessment.
Sven was not mediocre.
Sven was catastrophic.
Not fraudulent, as far as she could tell.
Worse.
Lazy.
This was negligence in a nice suit.
She opened another document.
Then another.
Each one made the problem clearer.
Poor sponsor allocation across entities. Redundant holdings. Lazy forecasting assumptions. Exposure in places that made no strategic sense unless one’s core investment philosophy was “Max has money, therefore it’ll be fine.”
Sven seemed to be the kind of adviser rich athletes ended up with all the time: overly comfortable, allergic to complexity unless it made him sound important, and profoundly reliant on the assumption that the client would never actually read the documents he was sent.
And Max, who would rather chew glass than voluntarily read a seventy-page financial briefing in PDF form, was the perfect prey for this kind of man. (Sven should not be allowed within ten metres of anyone with nine figures and a tendency to say “yeah, whatever” to legal language.)
There was too much capital sitting in structures that were technically fine and strategically lazy. Too much exposure to the sort of prestige investments that made advisers feel sophisticated and clients feel reassured without actually optimizing anything. Too little real attention paid to the specific shape of Max’s career curve: the compressed earning window, the reputational volatility of Formula One, the difference between driver salary, equity stakes, brand leverage, and deployable investment capital.
And the tax assumptions—
Ana closed her eyes for a second.
Opened them again.
Still terrible.
(Ana would much rather not deal with Max reenacting Fabiana Ecclestone’s career trajectory.)
Max was also 28. Not 68. His earning power was unusual, his profile nonlinear, his risks sport-specific and public-facing in ways most financial advisories wouldn’t be able to understand. He needed capital protected, yes, but also deployed with more imagination than Sven appeared capable of experiencing in his lifetime.
Sven had also treated Verstappen.com Racing as a vanity project rather than a growing business that required actual structure if it wanted to stop behaving like a beloved side quest and become a stable competitive project.
That one made Ana actually curse in Russian—which everybody that knew her, knew to be a very bad sign.
Verstappen.com Racing mattered.
Not in the sentimental public sense. Not because it looked nice on a website or gave journalists a useful paragraph about “legacy”.
It mattered because Max cared. Because it was one of the few things he had built that felt fully his. Not Red Bull’s. Not Jos’s. Not a paddock machine with his name bolted to the side of it.
His.
And Sven had handled it like a rich boy hobby.
Which, Ana thought coldly, was the sort of mistake made by men who mistook drivers for logos and hobbies for lesser businesses because neither one required them to actually understand intent.
At 05: 28 she was deep in a spreadsheet for prospective sponsor alignment and had already rejected seven options for Verstappen.com Racing because they were too loud, too misaligned, too exploitative, or too stupid.
She built a shortlist instead.
Brands that would fit. Brands that would scale. Brands that would not humiliate the operation by looking as though they had been selected by a drunk algorithm.
Then, because sleep deprivation apparently made her honest with herself in strange ways, she admitted that this part was soothing.
Not the anger.
The order.
The lines straightening.
The ugly thing becoming usable because she had touched it long enough to make it obey.
On her own laptop, a Brackley folder remained open.
Thankfully there were enough systems in Brackley to keep her occupied until the collapse of civilization.
Something about system design at four in the morning felt less like work and more like translation.
The car did not care that Ana had nightmares. Code did not interpret fear as an event. Systems were honest. They either worked or they didn’t.
She cleaned up two live notes from the Kimi/Valtteri setup discussion, sent one midnight-insomniac refinement to an exhausted but trustworthy engineer, and then, because if she was already awake she might as well make herself useful across every axis of her life, opened her inbox to a problem Xia had flagged.
Their learning software.
Khaled had sent an update six hours earlier with the subject line:
adaptive attention architecture / feedback
Ana read the whole thing in one pass, then replied with twelve comments, three architecture suggestions, and a separate proposal for emotional regulation prompts.
By 6, she remembered to drink the tea.
It was cold.
She drank it anyway.
The office screens reflected back a woman in an oversized dark shirt, hair tied up badly, eyes too bright from lack of sleep and too steady from refusing to name that lack correctly.
Fine.
She was fine.
She was simply awake and using the time.
Nothing to see here.
At 06: 12, she had returned to Verstappen.com Racing’s sponsor deck.
Rewrote two slides. Reordered the narrative so it stopped sounding like a rich man’s side project and started sounding like what it actually was: a motorsport venture with growth potential, talent pipelines, commercial value, and direct strategic relevance to Max’s public identity.
She added a note to herself to speak to Victoria about aesthetics and someone in branding about making the deck less frightened of ambition.
Then she returned to Sven’s mess and began ripping it apart in the earnest.
Not physically. (Unfortunately.)
But structurally.
New order. New headings. Actual logic. Reframed asset exposure. Cleaner capital paths.
Ana pulled up a blank document and began writing a list titled, with complete neutrality:
Why Sven Should Not Be Allowed Within Twenty Feet of Another Portfolio (What Max Actually Needs to Know)
1, Sven is overcomplicating simple things and under-governing important ones.
2, There is no reason for this many fee layers.
3, Verstappen.com Racing requires sponsor architecture, not affection and vibes.
4, If anyone uses the phrase “tax efficient” around you again without showing actual downside scenarios, ask for a second opinion immediately.
5, You need a different advisor.
She stared at point five for a moment.
Then added:
(Preferably one I do not want to hit with a chair.)
“What are you doing?”
Max’s voice.
Thick with sleep. Confused. Slightly offended by consciousness.
Ana kept her eyes on the screen for one second longer while she finished moving a projected cash-flow block into a less insulting position.
“Working.”
There was a pause.
Then the distinct sound of him taking in the number of open tabs.
That pause got longer.
“Nastya.”
She turned then.
He was in the doorway in the wheelchair, hair a complete disaster. He looked warm and rumpled and far too awake for this hour.
Also suspicious. Very suspicious.
His gaze moved from her face to the laptop. To his laptop. To the color-coded destruction currently occupying the main screen.
“What,” he said slowly, “are you doing?”
Ana turned back to his laptop and clicked open the folder labeled Sven.
“Fixing your financial future.”
Max stared at her.
“My what?”
“Your financial future,” she repeated. “Sven is doing a horrific job.”
He blinked once.
Then twice.
There was something almost admirable in how long he managed not to laugh, purely because he was still too sleepy to know whether this was real.
“You stole my laptop.”
“I borrowed it.”
“You broke into my files.”
“Your password is embarrassingly easy to guess.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
She finally looked at him properly.
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
Max moved further into the room, still frowning, and stopped beside the desk. His eyes scanned the screen.
The memo. The tables. The spreadsheet with Sven’s name in a tone that suggested execution.
He looked at her. “What time did you wake up?”
Ana shrugged. “Irrelevant.”
“That means late.”
“No. Early.”
“That’s worse.”
He looked over her shoulder at the nearest page.
There were annotations in the margins.
Not casual notes. Ana-notes.
Which meant phrases like:
Why
explain this fee structure to me as if I am hostile
this man is stealing from you politely
absolutely not
why does nobody in your life read PDFs
Max rubbed a hand over his face.
“…I was sleeping.”
“Yes.”
“And while I was sleeping, you decided to audit my finances.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
Then at the papers again.
Then at her.
“Ana.”
She folded her arms.
“I already knew Sven was bad,” she said. “When we bought the house, I knew he was bad. But this is worse than bad. This is embarrassing.”
Max took the mouse and carefully scrolled through the pdf. He read the first page.
Then the second line of her notes.
Then looked up.
“‘This man is stealing from you politely’?”
“Yes.”
He considered that.
Then, infuriatingly, laughed.
Ana stared at him. “This is not funny.”
“Yes,” he said, still half laughing. “It kind of is.”
“It is not.”
“You made a list.”
“Yes.”
“You titled it ‘What Max Actually Needs to Know.’”
“Yes.”
“Number five is just ‘You need a different adviser.’”
“Yes.”
He looked down at the page again, smile still there, softer now.
Then he looked at the other open files.
“This is Brackley.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s… sponsors?”
“Yes.”
“And who’s Khaled?”
“Software Engineer.”
He stared at her.
“You did work for Mercedes, started replacing Sven, and emailed some guy about software before breakfast?”
Ana blinked once. “Yes.”
Max shook his head slowly.
“That’s insane.”
“It’s efficient.”
“It’s deeply insane.”
She looked at him then, properly.
Tired enough to stop pretending his judgment might matter more than her own.
“You’re welcome.”
And that…that got him.
Because underneath the absurdity of it, underneath the early light and the paperwork and the unmistakable appearance of someone having functioned too hard for too long, there it was.
Care.
Furious, invasive, deeply controlling care.
He leaned against the table beside her and looked down at the battlefield of his finances.
“You’re firing Sven, aren’t you?”
Ana didn’t even hesitate.
“Yes.”
Max looked at the laptop.
Then at her.
“Okay.”
That made her pause.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
She blinked.
No argument. No instinctive defense of the status quo. No he’s been with me for years or maybe we should hear him out.
Just okay.
Max tapped the table once.
“If you’re this annoyed, it’s bad.”
“It is bad.”
“And if you’ve already started fixing it, it was probably very bad.”
“Yes.”
He nodded once. “Okay.”
She looked at him for another second.
Then, because she could not help herself:
“There are also three sponsor proposals for Verstappen.com Racing that should be rejected immediately.”
He exhaled a laugh through his nose. “Of course there are.”
“I have a shortlist.”
“Of course you do.”
Jimmy stretched on the rug.
Max reached past her for a glass, filled it one-handed, and drank while scanning the first page of her notes with the resigned fascination of a man discovering his private administrative life had been annexed by a benevolent tyrant.
Then he looked down at one of the margin comments again and smiled despite himself.
“‘Why does nobody in your life read PDFs.’”
Ana, at last, let the smallest corner of her mouth move.
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
***
Group Chat: “TEAM 33”
(Members: Max Verstappen, Jos Verstappen, Raymond Vermeulen)
Max Verstappen: I’m racing under 3 next season.
Raymond Vermeulen: Good Morning to you too. That is… not a small decision.
Max Verstappen: I know
Jos Verstappen: You wanted 3 first.
Max Verstappen: Yeah. I asked Daniel for permission. He agreed.
Raymond Vermeulen: All right. If you’re serious, we’ll need to start dealing with registration, branding implications, asset rollover, merchandise transition, legacy usage around 33, sponsor materials…
Max Verstappen: yes also Ana thinks I should fire Sven
Raymond Vermeulen: I beg your pardon?
Jos Verstappen: What did he do?
Max Verstappen: Apparently a lot
Raymond Vermeulen: Max.
Max Verstappen: She went through the PDFs
Raymond Vermeulen: Why was she going through the PDFs.
Max Verstappen: because she woke up early and decided my financial future was something she was going to fix.
Jos Verstappen: That sounds like Ana.
Raymond Vermeulen: Max, maybe think about this before you do anything dramatic.
Max Verstappen: I am thinking about it
Raymond Vermeulen: Are you sure about this?
Max Verstappen: pretty sure she knows more about finances than all three of us together
Jos Verstappen: Probably.
Raymond Vermeulen: What exactly did she say?
Max Verstappen: that Sven is “stealing from me politely”
Raymond Vermeulen: …
Max Verstappen: she also made a list
Raymond Vermeulen: Of course she did.
Max Verstappen: called “What Max Actually Needs to Know”
Jos Verstappen: I like her more every day.
Max Verstappen: number five was “you need a different adviser”
Raymond Vermeulen: That sounds less like advice and more like an execution order.
Max Verstappen: yes
Jos Verstappen: So fire him.
Raymond Vermeulen: Jos.
Jos Verstappen: What. If she’s right, she’s right.
Raymond Vermeulen: I want to see what she found.
Max Verstappen: you can ask her
Max Verstappen: Also I’m going to talk to Mercedes about supplying GT3 cars for Verstappen.com Racing
Raymond Vermeulen: You’re going to do what.
Jos Verstappen: Hmm.
Max Verstappen: it makes sense
Raymond Vermeulen: Explain.
Max Verstappen: long term it’s good for the team better support structure technical relationship future growth less mess
Raymond Vermeulen: You say that like you’ve already had the meeting in your head.
Jos Verstappen: Let me guess.Ana had that idea too.
Max Verstappen: yes
Raymond Vermeulen: Of course she did.
Max Verstappen: Isn't my fiancée amazing?!?!
Raymond Vermeulen: What.
Max Verstappen: what
Raymond Vermeulen: Your fiancée.
Max Verstappen: yes
Raymond Vermeulen: As in engaged.
Max Verstappen: yes
Raymond Vermeulen: Since when.
Max Verstappen: a bit
Raymond Vermeulen: Max.
Max Verstappen: what?
Raymond Vermeulen: That is not a timeline.
Jos Verstappen: I knew.
Raymond Vermeulen: You knew.
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: And nobody thought to tell me.
Max Verstappen: I’m telling you now
Raymond Vermeulen: This is not how people generally communicate engagements.
Max Verstappen: works fine for me
Jos Verstappen: You’re being dramatic.
Raymond Vermeulen: I am his manager.
Jos Verstappen: And.
Raymond Vermeulen: And this seems relevant.
Max Verstappen: It isn’t public yet.
Raymond Vermeulen: That is not the same as irrelevant.
Max Verstappen: it was relevant to me
Raymond Vermeulen: I am going to develop a stress condition because of this family.
Jos Verstappen: Too late.
Raymond Vermeulen: Congratulations.
Max Verstappen: thanks
Raymond Vermeulen: She is good for you.
Max Verstappen: yeah i know
Jos Verstappen: So. 3. New financial adviser. Mercedes GT3. Anything else you want to tell us before lunch?
Max Verstappen: not right now
Raymond Vermeulen: That is an extremely unsettling answer.
Max Verstappen: you’ll be fine
Raymond Vermeulen: Based on current evidence, I disagree.
Jos Verstappen: Get Ana to send the Sven notes, please.
Raymond Vermeulen: Yes. I want to see them.
Max Verstappen: ask her nicely yourself.
Raymond Vermeulen: You’re enjoying this.
Max Verstappen: yes
***
Text Messages: Jos Verstappen & Raymond Vermeulen
Raymond Vermeulen: I have a question. Do you think Max is going to blow up at me when I suggest a prenup?
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: Helpful.
Jos Verstappen: You asked.
Raymond Vermeulen: I meant do you think he is going to blow up in a manageable way or in a “I’m ignoring you for two weeks and driving like a lunatic” way
Jos Verstappen: The second one.
Raymond Vermeulen: Excellent.
Jos Verstappen: He’s not going to like it.
Raymond Vermeulen: No, I gathered that.
Jos Verstappen: He’ll hear “you don’t trust her.”
Raymond Vermeulen: And I do not, in fact, mean that.
Jos Verstappen: I know.
Raymond Vermeulen: I mean “you are one of the highest-earning drivers of your generation with multiple cross-jurisdictional structures and enough complexity in your finances to make this basic adult planning.”
Jos Verstappen: Say that to Ana, not him.
Raymond Vermeulen: That is… probably correct.
Jos Verstappen: She’ll understand it.
Raymond Vermeulen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: That may be the strangest part of all this.
Jos Verstappen: What.
Raymond Vermeulen: That I am less concerned about her reaction than his.
Jos Verstappen: Because she has a brain.
Raymond Vermeulen: He also has a brain.
Jos Verstappen: Yes. But hers is better for paperwork.
Raymond Vermeulen: He dropped “my fiancée thinks I should fire Sven” into the chat like it was weather.
Jos Verstappen: That was funny.
Raymond Vermeulen: It was not funny.
Jos Verstappen: It was a little funny.
Raymond Vermeulen: You already knew.
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: And didn’t think to mention it.
Jos Verstappen: It wasn’t my engagement.
Raymond Vermeulen: He said “isn’t my fiancée amazing?!?!” like a deranged fourteen-year-old.
Jos Verstappen: He is very pleased with himself.
Raymond Vermeulen: He is very pleased with her.
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: What do you actually think of her.
Jos Verstappen: I think she sees everything.
Raymond Vermeulen: That sounds like a warning.
Jos Verstappen: It is. And a compliment.
Raymond Vermeulen: Fair.
Jos Verstappen: She’s clever. Not in the irritating way where people want credit for it. In the useful way.I am honestly just happy that she is on our side.
Jos Verstappen: If she was against him or against us we’d all know.
Raymond Vermeulen: I suspect we would know very quickly. Instead she is apparently reorganizing his finances, firing Sven, and planning GT3 supply strategy with Mercedes.
Jos Verstappen: Exactly.
Raymond Vermeulen: So your view is basically “thank God the terrifying engineer loves my son.”
Jos Verstappen: More or less.
Raymond Vermeulen: That may also be my view.
Jos Verstappen: Good.
Raymond Vermeulen: I still need to raise the prenup.
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: And he is still going to hate it.
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: Should I talk to her first?
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: Without him?
Jos Verstappen: Yes.
Raymond Vermeulen: That feels vaguely treasonous.
Jos Verstappen: She’ll understand what it is. He’ll understand what it sounds like.
Raymond Vermeulen: All right. I’ll speak to her first. And then together.
Jos Verstappen: Good.
Raymond Vermeulen: If he kills me, I’m blaming you.
***
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 5 October 2025
Max had begun to suspect that Alastor enjoyed this.
Not rehabilitation, exactly.
That would have been understandable. Noble, even. A man committed to healing, movement, progress, the restoration of broken things.
No.
Alastor, Max had decided, enjoyed witnessing his suffering on the way there.
There was no other explanation.
Max was in the downstairs gym room—though “gym room” felt too casual for what Ana had built, which was more like a private medical and performance facility designed by someone who trusted no commercial provider and had therefore solved the problem by throwing insane amounts of money at it.
Max was sweating.
That was the first problem.
The second problem was Alastor.
The third was that Alastor looked much too calm for a man currently making him perform a sequence of movements that felt, in Max’s opinion, utterly offensive.
“Again,” Alastor said.
Max stared at him. “No.”
Alastor checked something on the tablet in his hand. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“It should have been.”
“It really wasn’t.”
From the doorway, Jack sat cross-legged on the floor with the rapt attention of a child watching very exciting documentary. Ana stood behind him, one shoulder against the frame, arms folded, expression far too neutral to be trusted.
Max glared at both of them in turn. “No one in this house supports me.”
“That’s not true,” Ana said calmly. “We support your recovery.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Jack, who had apparently decided he was now part of the medical oversight team, nodded gravely. “Ana’s right.”
Max looked at him. “You’re eight, you do not get a vote.”
“I think you are the one who is behaving like a child,” Jack said, with the terrible confidence of a child who knew he was beloved enough to be insufferable.
Alastor held up a hand before Max could properly articulate the many objections he had to being ganged up on by an engineer, a child, and a sadist.
“One more set,” he said.
Max muttered something deeply unflattering under his breath and did it anyway.
Because that was the thing.
He hated this. He hated the awkwardness of his own body. Hated the way effort now arrived in places where it used to live as instinct. Hated the weakness, the awkwardness, the constant negotiations with pain and weight and range and mechanics.
But he hated being stuck more.
And Alastor—infuriating, criminal-adjacent man that he was—was actually helping.
That, more than anything, was probably why Max couldn’t even enjoy hating him properly.
By the time the final rep was done, Max was breathing hard and in a mood best described as barely lawful.
Alastor made a note on the tablet. Then looked up. “Well,” he said.
Max narrowed his eyes.
That tone. That very specific, deceptively casual tone.
Ana heard it too. He knew she did because she straightened a fraction in the doorway.
“What,” Max said.
Alastor’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. “The sling can come off.”
There was a beat of silence. A full, suspended, disbelieving beat.
Max blinked. Then: “What.”
Jack gasped.
Ana’s entire face changed.
Not in a way most people would have noticed. But Max noticed. Of course he did. The tiny, involuntary loosening in her shoulders. The way relief passed over her expression so quickly it was almost gone before anyone else could catch it.
Alastor set the tablet down on the bench beside him.
“The shoulder is stable enough now,” he said. “You still need to be sensible.”
Max barked out a laugh. “Sensible.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I know,” Alastor replied dryly. “Which is why I’m saying it anyway.”
Jack was on his feet now, eyes wide. “The thing comes off?”
“Yes,” Alastor said.
“Forever?”
“For now,” Max said, already reaching for the hated sling like it had personally insulted his bloodline.
Alastor stepped in before he could do it one-handed and badly. “Let me.”
Max exhaled sharply but sat still.
The process itself was quick.
A strap loosened. Another. The weight he had carried for weeks unfastened in small, practical motions.
And then— Nothing. No sling.
No fabric cutting across his chest. No awkward suspension. No visible marker of damage hanging off him like a reminder.
His arm still felt strange. Still weaker than it should have been, still careful in its movement.
But free. Max rolled his shoulder once, cautiously. Then again.
“I am free,” he said.
Jack lit up like someone had announced a festival. Ana actually laughed.
Alastor, annoyingly, stayed composed. “You are improving,” he corrected.
Max ignored him completely.
“No,” he said, standing a little straighter. “I am free.”
Jack looked at Ana. “He’s being dramatic.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling now. “But just this once, it’s justified.”
Max turned toward Alastor. “I take back maybe seven percent of the things I said about you.”
“That’s generous.”
“It is.”
Alastor picked the crutches up from the wall.
“And,” he said, in the same infuriatingly calm tone, “we can transition you onto these.”
Jack made another delighted noise.
Max looked at the crutches. Then at Alastor. Then back at the crutches.
Wheelchair to crutches. Not fully back. Not finished. Not normal. But definitely closer to normalcy.
“Aha,” Max said, with enormous dignity. “Now we’re talking.”
Alastor handed them over.
“Try not to injure yourself with your own optimism.”
That seemed unfairly negative, Max thought, for a man currently presiding over the best moment of my week.
The first few steps were awkward.
Of course they were.
He hated that too. His body still didn’t move like it was his in all the old, easy ways. But it worked.
And after a few passes across the room, the mechanics settled slightly. Not elegant, but workable.
Jack watched avidly “That’s so cool.”
“It’s crutches,” Max said.
“Yes,” Jack replied, “Exactly.”
Ana stayed where she was in the doorway for another second, watching him cross the room and turn, and in that look there was so much quiet relief that Max felt it in his chest before she said a word.
Then she pushed away from the frame and came further in. “How does it feel?”
He looked at her. Better, he almost said. Instead: “Like I’m less annoying to transport.”
Her mouth twitched. “That too.”
Jack had already come closer, circling him with the fascinated caution of a child observing a new species.
“Can I try them?”
“No,” Max said immediately.
“Why?”
“Because they’re not toys.”
Jack looked at Ana for arbitration.
Ana, traitor that she was, said, “He’s right.”
Jack sighed like a tiny disappointed union rep and folded his arms.
Max took another step.
Then another.
And because freedom apparently went straight to his head, he looked at Ana and said, “I can get to the kitchen by myself now.”
Ana blinked once. “You could always get to the kitchen by yourself.”
“Yes, but now I can do it better.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“I can also escape.”
“Escape what.”
He looked at Alastor. “Him.”
Jack giggled.
Alastor did not even bother pretending to be offended.
“You’re still seeing me tomorrow,” he said.
Max stopped mid-step.
The emotional rise and fall was so immediate that Ana had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing.
“That,” Max said flatly, “is just unfair.”
***
Marina Bay Circuit, Singapore - 5 October 2025
By the time Toto was standing in the garage just before the race, headset half on, screens glowing in front of him, grid already tightening into that specific pre-start tension that made the whole garage feel electrically overclocked, he was in no mood for surprises.
Unfortunately, the team had chosen this exact part of the day to remind him that his daughter was still running half the systems architecture of Mercedes from another country out of what he strongly suspected was pure insomnia and spite.
Solomon appeared at his shoulder with a tablet in one hand and the expression of a man who had slept almost enough to pass as civil.
“We’ve got the revised predictive compensation loaded,” he said. “The final Kimi update came through clean.”
Toto nodded once, eyes still on the monitors.
“Good.”
Solomon hesitated.
That was unusual enough to make Toto glance at him properly.
“What.”
“Nothing,” Solomon said, in the tone of a man very obviously considering whether something was worth saying five minutes before a race start.
Toto narrowed his eyes.
“Solomon.”
He relented. “The final note from Ana was timestamped 04: 53 Monaco.”
Toto went still.
Not because the systems note itself was surprising. Ana sending useful, annoyingly precise refinements into a live operational environment from a different country at an hour when most people still belonged to sleep was not especially new. Still.
He stared at Solomon for a second. “Did she sleep at all?”
Solomon made a face that was diplomatic only because he was trying. “I would not like to speculate.”
Which, in practice, meant no. Of course.
Toto looked back at the screen.
Half the time…well, who was he kidding. More like 80% of the time, Toto Wolff had absolutely no clue what he was looking at when he saw his daughter’s work.
It was clean and elegant. Of course, it was.
And still… He knew her patterns.
Knew what it meant when she started solving multiple categories of problems before dawn, as though order enacted tight enough kept something unnamed from getting in.
And the irritating thing was—because irritating things so often remained true—it worked.
Not on the human level. Not permanently.
But in systems? In cars? In code? In performance environments that rewarded clarity and punished hesitation?
It worked magnificently.
Kimi and Valtteri had qualified third and fourth, which was not a miracle, but was close enough this season to feel like one should be mildly suspicious of it. The balance had come together. The setup window had narrowed into something coherent. The car was still imperfect—God, it was still imperfect—but it was no longer behaving like a machine built by competing internal philosophies and a prayer. The Altair update had smoothed out the edges into something palatable.
Toto exhaled through his nose.
He could see her in his head too clearly.
Hair tied up badly. Laptop open before sunrise. Too awake. Too useful.
A movement beside him pulled him back.
Solomon was already looking at another data block, thumb moving lightly across the tablet.
“We’ll need to confirm next year’s trackside systems team,” he said. “Especially if Elliott’s going to take more of the live support load.”
That was a safer topic.
Toto took it gratefully. “Yes.”
They had been discussing it quietly for weeks now. Not dramatically, not as some great shake-up, but as the sort of practical restructuring that simple happened when the team started acknowledging that life had the indecency to continue outside the factory.
Solomon had spent years being precisely where Mercedes needed him, which was usually everywhere at once and often at personal cost.
Now Mina had had their third child earlier that year, and was going back to work. Mina, who worked in aero and had the kind of intelligence that made the phrase “going back” feel insulting given how much she had continued doing even while absent from formal meetings. Mina, who had somehow produced three children and remained more organized than half the men on the executive side.
Solomon was needed more at home.
And if Toto was being honest, he did not want to build a team that only functioned if every competent person quietly set their family life on fire to keep the machinery warm.
“Elliott will need more experience trackside,” Toto said.
Solomon nodded. “He can do it, but he’ll complain. Loudly.
Toto allowed himself the smallest huff of amusement.
Elliott would complain because Elliott believed complaining was part of systems engineering, like version control or controlled pessimism. But he would do it well.
And Solomon, for all his value here, was worth more to the team long-term if they stopped asking him to be physically present for every category of emergency while Mina was trying to return to something resembling professional sanity.
“It will be better.” Toto said after a moment. “For next year.”
Solomon glanced at him. “For the team?”
“For the team,” Toto said. Then, drier: “And for your marriage.”
That got a short laugh out of him. “Mina would agree.”
“I am sure Mina would have stronger language.”
“She often does.”
And still, absurdly, Toto was thinking about 04: 53 Monaco time.
Because Ana had clearly been awake.
Of course she had.
Too early.
Ridiculously early.
But then, early for Ana had never meant the same thing it meant for normal people.
Toto himself never took meetings before ten if he could avoid it. There was no glory in seeing the sun rise over a spreadsheet.
Ana, on the other hand, had developed the habit of appearing in Brackley at five in the morning as if dawn were simply the least crowded time to outwork everyone.
He had never liked that.
Admired it, yes. Relied on it, often. Liked it, no.
Because people who arrived at work at five were rarely sleeping properly.
And because he was her father, and fathers were allowed to dislike things that made their children too bright-eyed and too productive at impossible hours for reasons they didn’t want to talk about properly..
He looked down at his phone in his hand almost before he realized what he was doing.
The therapist’s reply was still there.
Monday, 11:30 works.
Toto read it again.
Not because he needed to. Because it was still faintly annoying to have done the thing and even more annoying for Susie to have been right.
He had sent the message from the hotel room the night before after she’d gone to shower, mostly because once the decision was made he had wanted it done before he had the chance to become idiotic about it.
Monday. Fine.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket just as Solomon said, with the dangerous casualness of a man choosing his moment:
“She wasn’t alone on that call, by the way.”
Toto turned his head.
“What.”
“Friday,” Solomon said. “FP2 setup discussion.”
Toto frowned. “No, I know which call.”
Solomon nodded toward the screens, but his attention was elsewhere. “Max was there.”
Toto stared at him. For a second, genuinely, he thought he had misheard. “What?”
“He was there,” Solomon repeated drily. “In Monaco. With Ana. In that room.”
Toto blinked once. He had so many question. Starting with how in the world Solomon Becker even knew that Max Verstappen was anywhere near his daughter. “How do you know that?”
Solomon just snorted. “Because Ana is exceptional. But she wouldn’t have clocked some of the driving choices.”
The garage continued around them—voices, screens, race countdown, the ordinary machinery of pre-race—but for a second the conversation narrowed to a line only the two of them could see.
“What do you mean?”
Solomon considered how much explanation Toto required. “Kimi’s brake release into seven,” he said. “Valtteri delaying rotation in the second sector. She got the systems implications immediately. Obviously. But the note about why Kimi was compounding the rear issue on entry?” He tilted his head slightly. “That was driver-brain.”
Toto stared at him. Then, slowly: “…you know.”
Solomon met his eyes.
“Yes.”
It was one of the only times Toto had ever been properly shocked in a paddock and not been immediately forced to hide it.
His eyebrows lifted before he could stop them. “You know about Ana and Max.”
“Yes.”
“And you did not think to mention this to me?”
Solomon did not even have the decency to look guilty. “She told me after the crash.”
After the crash. Of course that was when Ana would have chosen to widen a circle rather than when things were easy.
Toto looked away for one second, just long enough to absorb the absurdity of it. Then back. “And your reaction was what, exactly?”
Solomon’s mouth twitched very slightly. “That it made sense.”
Toto stared at him. “Made sense.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Solomon folded his arms loosely. “It explained a few things.”
That, Toto thought, was not remotely enough explanation. “What things?”
“Scheduling gymnastics mostly,” Solomon said drily.
Toto frowned.
Solomon, seeing that he was genuinely going to have to spell this out, went on with the patience of a man explaining a pattern to someone who was perfectly capable of seeing it but had, for emotional reasons, somehow failed to. “Ana used to be at some race weekends that didn’t make structural sense for her,” he said. “Not often. Not enough to be obvious. But enough.”
Toto blinked.
Then, unwillingly, began replaying old calendars in his head. Specific weekends. Specific countries. Specific “coincidences.” Ana appearing at races she did not strictly need to be at. Ana being uninterested in most of the social nonsense around them while, apparently, all along, there had been a very specific reason she was there at all.
He had noticed the pattern. He had simply not… noticed the pattern.
His daughter.
His extremely private, chronically self-contained, maddeningly competent daughter had apparently been doing scheduling gymnastics for years to see Max Verstappen.
Then, before he stepped away, he looked once more at Solomon and said: “You really think it makes sense.”
Solomon didn’t even hesitate.
“Yes. He’s the best driver in the sport right now.”
Toto said nothing.
Because there was no point pretending otherwise. Not now. Not after everything. Not after Max had dragged impossible things out of inadequate machinery for years and made it look, if not effortless, then at least inevitable.
“And she,” Solomon continued, “is one of the best engineers in the sport.”
Toto’s gaze shifted back to him.
There was no pride in Solomon’s tone. No flattery. No attempt to soften it because the subject was personal.
Just fact.
“If you strip away the noise,” Solomon said, “the names, the politics—what are they, really?”
He answered his own question before Toto could.
“A driver who sees things before other people do. And an engineer who sees systems before other people do.”
Toto went very still.
Because yes. That was one version of it.
Solomon continued, a little more quietly now, because the thing he was describing was not just compatibility. “They’re both operating at a level where most people are… slower,” he said. “Not stupid. Just slower. Less exact. Less intense. Less able to live at that frequency for long.”
Toto looked away for a second.
Toward Kimi’s garage again. Toward the mechanics. Toward the systems that still ran, in part, on logic his daughter had built while half the paddock slept.
“And with most people,” Solomon said, “that creates friction.”
That, too, was true.
Ana had spent years moving through rooms where she had to choose between translating herself down or being misread upward into something colder, harsher, stranger than she actually was. It was one of the things that had worried Toto most when she was younger. Not whether she was capable. Whether anyone around her would know how to meet her without first trying to dull the edges.
“But I do not think Max Verstappen ever needed her to be less.”
It was accurate. Toto had seen enough of them now, enough small moments and and all the quiet ways Ana’s name altered Max’s posture, to understand that whatever lived between them had not been built on simplification.
If anything, it had survived because Max seemed utterly uninterested in asking anyone—least of all Ana—to become smaller for ease.
“From a pure performance perspective, honestly? They make perfect sense.”
Toto’s eyebrows lifted slightly. That was not quite the phrasing he’d expected.
Solomon noticed. “I don’t mean in a cold way,” he said. “I mean… look at what each of them values.”
He ticked it off almost absently.
“Competence. Precision. Reliability.Someone who says what they mean. Someone whose mind actually keeps up.”
Toto let out a breath through his nose. “That sounds less like romance and more like a hiring brief.”
Solomon smiled faintly.
“Yes,” he said. “Well.”
That was annoyingly convincing. It was also, perhaps, one of the most Ana-compatible descriptions of romance Toto had ever heard.
“She’s not drawn to charm for charm’s sake,” Solomon said. “She doesn’t care about status signaling, doesn’t care about performance in the social sense, doesn’t care whether a room likes someone. She cares whether they are real. Whether they are competent. Whether they hold under pressure.”
Toto looked at him.
“And Max,” Solomon said simply, “holds.”
A beat. Then: “So does she.”
“When you say it like that,” Toto said, “it sounds like it was inevitable.”
***
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 5 October 2025
By the time the formation lap began, the living room had reorganized itself into a viewing party.
The television dominated one wall, the sound turned just loud enough to feel immersive without drowning out conversation.
Jack had claimed the floor first.
He had built himself a proper command center out of one blanket, two cushions, Coco the capybara, Nova the wolf “for moral support,” and a bowl of popcorn that Ana had portioned into existence with the efficient resignation of a woman who knew resistance was pointless. He sat cross-legged in the middle of it all wearing one of the oversized prototype hoodies from Victoria’s box, which nearly swallowed him whole.
Ana was on the sofa with her laptop closed for once, a glass of water on the table beside her and the expression of someone pretending very hard that she was merely watching a race and not automatically running twenty internal processes about what each team was doing wrong.
Max was next to her, cast propped up, shoulder finally free of the sling, which had done wonders for his mood even if he was still acting as though crutches made him approximately invincible.
Daniel arrived ten minutes before lights out carrying a paper bag and the grin of a man who had absolutely decided this was now his Sunday too.
“I brought snacks,” he announced as Nikolai let him in.
“You always bring snacks,” Max said.
“Of course I do,” Daniel replied, walking into the room like he had already been included in the seating plan.
Jack looked up from the floor. “Did you bring good ones?”
Daniel stopped. Hand to chest. “Mate. That is offensive.”
Jack considered him for one second. “So maybe.”
Daniel gasped. “I’m being bullied by a child in a borrowed hoodie.”
“It’s my hoodie,” Jack said. “I just happen to be smaller than it.”
Max snorted.
Daniel dropped onto the armchair opposite them with the ease of someone who belonged in other people’s homes almost immediately and held up the paper bag triumphantly.
“Chocolate. Crisps. Those weird gummy things I know Max pretends not to like.”
Max looked offended. “I do not pretend.”
“You absolutely pretend.”
“I don’t.”
Ana, still watching the broadcast graphics: “He does.”
Daniel pointed at her. “Thank you.”
The lights went out.
The room changed.
That was always the thing about a race start, even when you weren’t in the paddock, even when you were watching from a sofa in Monaco with your leg in a cast and a child on the floor and your ex-teammate in the armchair stealing your snacks.
Everything sharpened.
Jack leaned forward instantly, snack forgotten.
Daniel stopped talking.
Ana went still in that particular way she always did when something became technically interesting.
And Max—Max relaxed.
The first lap was chaos in the usual controlled-Singapore way. Cars too close to walls, tire temperatures doing strange things, everyone pretending this was manageable while driving like the track had personally insulted them.
Lando got away cleanly.
Oscar stayed attached.
Kimi held on in a way that made Ana make a small, involuntary sound of professional approval.
Daniel caught it.
“There she is,” he said softly.
Ana blinked once. “There who is.”
“You, who can’t watch a rookie defend properly without becoming emotionally involved.”
“I am not emotionally involved.”
“Kimi just hit the apex exactly how you wanted and your face changed.”
Max, without looking away from the screen, said, “He’s right.”
Ana folded her arms. “I don’t know what you two are talking about.”
Jack pointed at the screen. “Kimi is doing good.”
“He is,” Ana admitted.
Daniel looked at Max then.
Really looked.
Because there, on the coffee table beside him, was a legal pad.
Covered in notes.
Not nonsense scribbles either. Proper observations, short phrases, tire thoughts, balance comments, little shorthand fragments that Daniel recognized instantly from years of debriefs and garages and listening to Max see a race differently than almost everyone else.
Daniel leaned forward and picked it up before Max could stop him.
“Mate.”
Max looked over. “What.”
Daniel scanned the page.
Tire phase shift lap 14.
Oscar rotating earlier than Lando in 10.
Kimi calmer over kerbs than expected.
McLaren still too comfortable with rear movement.
He looked up. “You’re taking notes.”
Max looked offended. “I have eyes.”
“That’s not the point.”
Jack leaned over from the floor. “He always does that.”
Daniel blinked. “Always?”
Max shrugged one shoulder.
“Sometimes.”
Ana took a sip of water in the deeply suspicious manner of a woman pretending not to know exactly what Daniel was about to discover next.
Daniel turned another page.
There were more notes.
Not just about the race.
Not just about today.
Fragments about setups.
Little comments about driver tendencies.
And then— He stopped.
Brows up.
“Doriane Pin?”
Max glanced over again. “What about her.”
Daniel turned the pad toward him.
There, in Max’s terrible handwriting, were at least two full sections of notes clearly labeled with her name.
Daniel stared.
Then slowly looked at Ana.
Then back at Max.
“You’re making notes for Doriane Pin.”
Max, instead of seeming embarrassed by this, looked mildly annoyed that it had become a revelation.
“Yes.”
Daniel laughed once in disbelief. “Of course you are.”
Jack nodded. “He watches F1 Academy too.”
Ana’s mouth twitched.
Daniel flipped another page.
There was more.
Throttle hesitation into slow rotation.
Too polite in traffic.
Can attack earlier if she trusts rear.
He looked at Max again.
“You’re giving everybody homework.”
“No.”
“This is literally homework.”
“It’s just notes.”
Daniel held up the pad. “For other drivers.”
Max frowned like Daniel was being wilfully dense. “So?”
On screen, the race settled into that particular Singapore rhythm: strategic, suffocating, waiting for someone to make a mistake or a wall to become relevant in the wrong way.
Lando led.
Oscar stayed second.
Kimi was third and driving with the kind of composed intensity that made Ana lean very slightly forward every few laps and then pretend she had not.
Daniel glanced between the television and Max’s notes again.
“So what do you do,” he said, “just send these to everyone now?”
Max shrugged. “Maybe I will.”
Daniel laughed. “That is absolutely insane.”
“It’s useful.”
“To who.”
Max gave him a look. “The people who ask.”
Jack held his hand up without taking his eyes off the television. “Can I have another snack if Kimi gets a podium?”
Ana looked at him. “No.”
“Why not`?”
“Because motorsport is not a coupon system.”
“It should be.”
Daniel leaned forward. “I support him, actually.”
“Of course you do,” Ana muttered.
The race edged on.
The light from the television turned everyone a little blue around the edges.
Even Daniel, fundamentally incapable of silence for more than ninety seconds under normal conditions, quieted when the race got properly tense.
By lap forty, the room had settled into a kind of domestic concentration.
Jack sprawled now on his stomach, chin in his hands, fully invested.
Daniel in the armchair, one ankle over his knee, intermittently stealing from the snacks he brought.
Ana upright and very still, watching Kimi manage tire life with almost painful focus.
Max beside her, not moving much, not needing to, taking in every line and correction and strategic hesitation like he was cataloguing the entire race for later.
On lap fifty-six, when Lando still led and Oscar still held second and Kimi had somehow kept his podium position through a particularly ugly traffic sequence, Daniel looked at Max and said:
“So. Housewarming.”
Max blinked once. “What.”
“You have a house. It has furniture. Apparently children and stuffed predators live here now. I feel like this should be acknowledged.”
Jack looked up immediately. “With cake?”
Daniel pointed at him. “Exactly. Finally, someone with vision.”
Ana folded her arms. “You say ‘housewarming’ like there has been time.”
“There has not,” Max said.
“There could be,” Daniel replied.
Max looked at Ana.
Ana looked back.
There was a pause.
Then she said, with the calm practicality of a woman who had already checked the week in her head before opening her mouth: “We could do lunch on Thursday maybe.”
Daniel turned toward her so quickly it was almost comic. “You just had that ready.”
“Yes.”
“That’s so impressive and so frightening.”
“Thank you,” Ana said drily.
Max snorted.
Daniel shook his head, smiling. “Lunch on Thursday. I’ll take it.”
Then, because no conversation in this room was apparently allowed to remain free of life-altering logistics for more than six minutes, he added: “Speaking of events no one has planned properly yet—how’s wedding planning going?”
Silence.
Daniel looked between them.
Then slowly leaned back.
“Oh no.”
Ana did not move.
Max looked at the television with the concentration of a man hoping Oscar Piastri’s sector times might physically save him.
Daniel narrowed his eyes.
“You have planned nothing.”
“That’s not true,” Max said.
Ana turned her head and looked at him. “That is extremely optimistic.”
Daniel barked out a laugh. “You have planned literally nothing.”
Max frowned. “We know when.”
“When?” Daniel asked.
“Before next season,” Ana and Max said at exactly the same time.
That got Jack’s full attention. “You’re getting married before racing starts again?”
Ana looked at Jack. “That is the current intention.”
Jack considered this. “Do I need a suit?”
Max actually laughed.
Ana, traitor, looked like she might too.
Daniel stared between them all. “You have a timeline, no venue, no guests, no plan, and apparently the child is already planning his outfit.”
“Correct,” Ana said.
“That is insane.”
“We’re aware.”
“Do you have literally anything else? Location? Food? Guest List?”
Max thought about it. “We want it to be private.”
Ana nodded once.
Daniel blinked. “That’s it.”
“That is not nothing,” Ana said.
“It is if you’re trying to organize a wedding in three months.”
She tilted her head. “People have accomplished more in less time.”
“That is the least reassuring thing anyone has ever said to me.”
The final lap began.
The room quieted again.
Lando crossed the line first. Oscar second. Kimi third.
Jack sat up straight and punched the air like someone had personally consulted him on strategy.
“Yes!”
Ana smiled.
Kimi had his podium. Lando had a Singapore victory. Oscar had second.
And Max—watching the race in his own house with Ana beside him and Daniel in the armchair and a child on the floor negotiating snacks like a diplomat—found himself thinking that even like this, with crutches leaning against the wall and healing still irritatingly unfinished, his life was actually a pretty good one.
***
Group Chat: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!
(Members: Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen, Yuki Tsunoda, Liam Lawson, Isack Hadjar, Oliver Bearman, Esteban Ocon, Gabriel Bortoleto, Nico Hulkenberg, Kimi Antonelli, Valtteri Bottas, Pierre Gasly, Franco Colapinto, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Alex Albon, Carlos Sainz, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso)
Max Verstappen: Good race.
Lando Norris: thank u max
Oscar Piastri: this feels ominous already
Max Verstappen: @Lando good first stint you were over-rotating less in 7 than you did in quali still too much steering correction on exit in 13
Lando Norris: oh good we’re doing this publicly now?
Alex Albon: PUBLIC DEBRIEF
Oscar Piastri: this is my nightmare
Max Verstappen: @Oscar better traction phase than lando in 10 and 14 still leaving a bit too much margin in traffic could have put him under more pressure around lap 32
Lando Norris: mate?????
Oscar Piastri: he’s not wrong unfortunately
Charles Leclerc: I’m obsessed with the fact that Max was clearly taking notes during the race
Pierre Gasly: he absolutely had a notepad out like a retired schoolteacher
Max Verstappen: I’m not retired
Lando Norris: max genuinely got home from nearly dying and immediately resumed unpaid consultancy
Valtteri Bottas: this is his love language
Yuki Tsunoda: this is not love this is violence with bullet points
Max Verstappen: @Kimi very good tyre management calmer over kerbs than expected good defence without overcommitting still too polite in traffic you can attack earlier if you trust the rear
Kimi Antonelli: thank you I think
Oliver Bearman: kimi got a paragraph i’m jealous
Gabriel Bortoleto: same
Franco Colapinto: max please rate our suffering too
Max Verstappen: no
Isack Hadjar: coward
Liam Lawson: send the full notes
Max Verstappen: why
Liam Lawson: because i know you have full notes
Oscar Piastri: he definitely has sections and subheadings
Charles Leclerc: and colour coding somehow
Max Verstappen: I do not colour code.
Pierre Gasly: that sounded like an answer from someone sitting next to a woman who absolutely colour codes
Max Verstappen: Shut up.
Fernando Alonso: Send the notes, Max
Lando Norris: Oh if fernando asked you kind of have to now
Lewis Hamilton: Yes, I also want to see them
Alex Albon: same
Carlos Sainz: same
Yuki Tsunoda: same
Oscar Piastri: I hate that i also want them
Max Verstappen: fine
Max Verstappen: PDF attached: singapore_notes_postrace_mv.pdf
Lando Norris: HE MADE IT A PDF
Oscar Piastri: Of Course, he did
Charles Leclerc: this is the most Max Verstappen thing i have ever seen
Alex Albon: “McLaren still too comfortable with rear movement” Max i’m crying
Lando Norris: why are you like this
Oscar Piastri: “could have attacked earlier lap 32” alright sorry coach
Kimi Antonelli: “too polite in traffic” is evil
Max Verstappen: It’s true
Kimi Antonelli: I know
Franco Colapinto: this man needs hobbies
Lando Norris: he has hobbies they’re just all racing
Lewis Hamilton: accurate
Fernando Alonso: the notes are good
Max Verstappen: obviously
Yuki Tsunoda: i want notes after every race now
Oscar Piastri: careful what you wish for
Liam Lawson: no, i’m serious this is actually useful
Max Verstappen: then use it
Max Verstappen: also housewarming lunch on thursday At my house 1pm don’t be late
Lando Norris: ??????
Oscar Piastri: that was abrupt
Yuki Tsunoda: here where
Max Verstappen: my house
Alex Albon: oh my god we’re all getting invited to the mysterious house
Pierre Gasly: this feels significant
Charles Leclerc: is this a trap
Max Verstappen: maybe
Lando Norris: can we bring gifts
Max Verstappen: no
Oscar Piastri: that means yes
Carlos Sainz: what kind of lunch
Max Verstappen: food
Lewis Hamilton: remarkably informative
Fernando Alonso: Who is cooking?
Max Verstappen: not me
Pierre Gasly: Important question: are there cats?
Max Verstappen: Yes
Alex Albon: i’m in
Yuki Tsunoda: i was already in but now more
Liam Lawson: Will there be enough food for all of us?
Max Verstappen: Yes
Valtteri Bottas: dress code?
Max Verstappen: Normal
Lewis Hamilton: that is not a useful answer coming from you
Fernando Alonso: i will arrive exactly at 13: 00
Max Verstappen: good
Charles Leclerc: is Ana aware that you invited twenty drivers to lunch?
Max Verstappen: yes
Lando Norris: that means she approved it which means there is a spreadsheet
Oscar Piastri: and seating plan
Pierre Gasly: and weather backup option
Alex Albon: and a contingency dessert
Max Verstappen: you are all annoying
Lando Norris: see everyone thursday bringing a gift
Max Verstappen: don’t
Oscar Piastri: we will
Charles Leclerc: absolutely we will
Yuki Tsunoda: i’m bringing something small and chaotic
Max Verstappen: don’t
Pierre Gasly: too late
Lewis Hamilton: see you Thursday
Fernando Alonso: Don’t be late.
Lando Norris: Fernando acting like deputy headmaster again
Oscar Piastri: very reassuring honestly
Max Verstappen: 1pm If anyone is late i’m locking the gate.
Alex Albon: you sound serious
Max Verstappen: I am
Lando Norris: This is going to be absolute carnage.
Oscar Piastri: yes
Charles Leclerc: Can’t wait!
Three More Days – OP81
Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Reader
Summary: A few more days. A few more moments. And maybe something that feels impossibly permanent.
Part 28 to Let the Light in
▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။||||။၊|• 1:21
“Stay with me for another week?”
“What?”
Your head snapped toward him, brows pulling together slightly as you looked at him—still tangled in the sheets, bare and completely unbothered, like he hadn’t just said something mildly insane.
“Let’s stay another week,” he repeated, a little more certain this time.
“I only have to race at the end of June again, and no one needs me at the MTC next week, so…” he trailed off, one shoulder lifting in a small shrug, like this was all perfectly reasonable. “Why not?”
A soft laugh slipped past your lips before you could stop it, shaking your head as you pushed yourself up to sit on the edge of the bed, your towel barely secured around you.
“You’ve gone a little crazy, haven’t you?”
“Maybe,” he admitted easily.
There was no hesitation in it. No attempt to take it back.
Only now—he shifted slightly, propping himself up on one elbow, his hand reaching for you without thinking. His fingers wrapped around your waist, warm against your skin as he pulled you just a little closer, his chin tilting up so he could look at you properly.
And this time—
There was something different in his expression.
Softer.
Less guarded.
Like the wall he had been carefully maintaining for months had finally… slipped.
“I just—” he started, then paused, his thumb brushing absently against your side as if grounding himself.
His gaze flicked over your face, like he was trying to find the right way to say it without making it sound like too much.
“I don’t want to rush back into everything,” he said quietly. “Not yet.”
The words settled between you—gentle, but weighted with something real.
“Not when this is still…” he exhaled softly, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his lips, “…new.”
Your heart stuttered slightly at that.
New.
It wasn’t uncertain anymore.
It wasn’t undefined.
Just… new.
“And I don’t get a lot of time where things feel like this,” he added, more quietly now. “Where I don’t have to think about anything else.”
Your expression softened as you looked down at him, something warm unfolding in your chest.
“Oscar…”
He shook his head lightly, like he didn’t want to overcomplicate it.
“I just want a few more days,” he said. “With you. Like this.”
There it was.
No performance.
No overthinking.
Just him.
You let out a quiet breath, your hand coming up almost instinctively to rest against his hair, your fingers brushing through it gently.
“You’re really bad at pretending you don’t care, you know that?” you murmured.
A faint huff of amusement left him, his eyes closing briefly at the feeling of your touch.
“I’m not pretending anymore,” he said simply.
That made something in your chest tighten—in the best way.
You studied him for a moment longer, taking him in like this—unguarded, a little messy around the edges, but certain in a way he hadn’t been before.
Then you smiled.
“Okay,” you said softly. “Maybe not a week.”
His eyes opened instantly.
“But…” you added, tilting your head slightly, a teasing glint returning to your gaze, “we can negotiate.”
His brows lifted, interest flickering immediately.
“Three more days?” he tried.
You pretended to think about it, your fingers still absentmindedly playing with his hair.
“Three days,” you agreed finally.
The relief in his expression was subtle—but there.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” you smiled.
For a second, he just looked at you—like he needed to make sure you weren’t going to take it back.
Then his hand tightened slightly at your waist, pulling you down toward him until you had no choice but to fall back against the mattress beside him, a quiet laugh escaping you as he shifted over you.
“That’s a very reasonable decision,” he murmured, his voice lower now, softer—but lighter too.
“Is it?” you teased.
“Definitely.”
His nose brushed lightly against yours, not quite kissing you yet, just lingering there—like he was enjoying the space now that he didn’t have to hold back anymore.
“Three days is a good start,” he added.
“A start?” you echoed, amused.
He hummed, the faintest smile playing at his lips.
“I’m thinking long-term.”
You rolled your eyes lightly, though your smile gave you away completely.
“Let’s survive three days first, Piastri.”
“Fair,” he conceded quietly.
But he didn’t move away.
If anything, he stayed closer—his hand still resting at your waist, his gaze still fixed on you like he hadn’t quite gotten used to the fact that he was allowed to.
That you were his now.
Not temporary.
Not uncertain.
His.
And for once—
He didn’t feel the need to question it.
❁✿❀❁✿❀
What you were now was new and not new at all.
Because Oscar was the same—maybe even deeper—but now it just had a title. A name to it. He now was your boyfriend.
You couldn’t stop smiling even if you’d tried to, and neither could he. Not even when you dragged him into a boutique so you could buy a bikini for the three days you had decided to stay longer in Barcelona. Not when you tried at least four pairs on – that in his eyes all looked perfect on you – until you finally decided on the second one. Not when you pulled him into another store when you had seen a bag you immediately fallen in love with and not even, when you pulled him into a fourth store.
He had booked a cute little hotel, further away from the track, a little more exclusive so you’d still be as private as possible, close to the beach.
You loved it. Every second of it.
“you should re-apply sunscreen,” you told him then, eyes wandering over his fair body, lingering on his abs a bit longer than they maybe should’ve before moving along his chest, to the mole on his neck, before landing on those slightly reddened shoulders.
“It’s fine,” he chuckled softly, eyes hidden behind sunglasses but always on you.
“You say that now,” you smiled. “and as soon as you try to pull a shirt over your shoulders you’ll be annoyed.”
He huffed a quiet laugh before finally nodding, “alright,” he murmured, straightening up in the chair next to you, then reaching into your bag in search of the sunscreen before plopping down into the chair in front of you instead.
“Will you help me?” he asked with a soft smirk, holding the bottle over his shoulder, offering it back to you.
Of course you couldn’t say no.
You wouldn’t lose an opportunity where you could freely touch his warm skin. To feel it properly. To know it.
So you took the bottle from his hand, squirted some lotion into your palms, rubbing them together to warm it slightly before you reached out.
Your hands settled on his shoulders, and as you slowly spread the sunscreen across his skin, Oscar exhaled—barely, but enough for you to notice. His posture softened almost instantly, tension leaving his frame as he leaned into your touch without thinking about it.
“You’re good at it,” he hummed. “Should really hire you as my professional sunscreen sergeant,” he joked, earning a soft chuckle from you that brushed warm against the back of his neck.
“You couldn’t afford me if you tried,” you fired back, continuing your careful movements to avoid leaving streaks or a white cast on his already sun-warmed skin.
He let out a quiet laugh, tilting his head slightly. “Oh, is that so?”
You nodded, entirely too proud of yourself. “You know, it’s like 100k an hour.”
“Aha?” he laughed properly now, the sound light and disbelieving.
And then—before you could react—Oscar suddenly turned in the chair.
One moment you were focused, hands still hovering near his shoulders, and the next he had shifted, reaching out and wrapping his arms around your waist, pulling you closer before his fingers found your ribs.
“Wait—Osc—!”
He started tickling you with precise, knowing movements, clearly aware of exactly where to go.
“Hey—no—stop—!” you gasped through laughter, immediately squirming in his hold, trying to push his hands away while half falling into his lap.
But he only tightened his grip slightly, laughing under his breath as you struggled against him.
“100k an hour, hm?” he murmured, still tickling you, clearly amused.
“You’re—cheating—!” you managed to get out between breaths, grabbing his wrist in a weak attempt to stop him.
“Am I?” he replied innocently, though the grin in his voice gave him away.
You finally managed to twist enough to push at his chest, your laughter spilling freely now, unguarded and bright in the quiet of the afternoon.
“Okay—okay—truce!” you surrendered, breathless, one hand still resting against his shoulder as you tried to catch your breath.
Oscar slowed immediately.
His hands stilled, not fully letting go, but no longer tickling either. Just holding you there. Close.
“Truce,” he repeated, quieter this time.
For a second, neither of you moved.
The breeze from the nearby beach brushed lightly across your skin, the sun warm against your shoulders, his hands still resting at your waist like it was the most natural place in the world.
And it was.
His thumb brushed absentmindedly against your side, slower now, gentler, as his gaze softened behind the sunglasses.
“You know,” he said after a moment, voice lower, more thoughtful now, “this is… really nice.”
Your breathing had finally evened out, but your smile hadn’t left.
“Of course I want you to stay,” he said immediately, the words leaving him before he could soften them, before he could filter them into something calmer, something more like him.
There was something almost disbelieving in his tone.
Like the idea that you wouldn’t be wanted hadn’t even crossed his mind—until you said it.
“If I could,” he continued, his voice lowering again, but still carrying that same urgency underneath, “I’d have you with me all the time.”
The words settled between you.
And for a second—
Even he seemed to register what he had just said.
Because he stilled. Just slightly.
Like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Like he hadn’t even fully admitted it to himself before now.
But he didn’t take it back.
Didn’t soften it.
Didn’t laugh it off.
“Really?” you asked, softer now.
“Of course I want you to stay,” he said immediately, the words leaving him before he could soften them, before he could filter them into something calmer, something more like him.
There was something almost disbelieving in his tone.
Like the idea that you wouldn’t be wanted hadn’t even crossed his mind—until you said it.
“If I could,” he continued, his voice lowering again, but still carrying that same urgency underneath, “I’d have you with me all the time.”
The words settled between you.
And for a second—
Even he seemed to register what he had just said.
Because he stilled. Just slightly.
Like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Like he hadn’t even fully admitted it to himself before now.
But he didn’t take it back.
Didn’t soften it.
Didn’t laugh it off.
“Really?” you asked, softer now.
Your heart had picked up again—steady, but heavier somehow.
He nodded, without hesitation this time.
“Yeah.”
Simple. Certain.
“If it weren’t for your job,” he added after a moment, his thumb brushing lightly along your arm without thinking, “I’d ask you right now to just… come with me. To the races. Stay until summer break.”
There was no pressure in it.
No expectation.
Just honesty.
The kind that made it harder to breathe, not easier.
“This is hypothetical, right?” you asked, your voice quieter than before, like speaking too loudly might make it too real.
“Yeah,” he nodded.
But his eyes didn’t quite match the word.
“And if I said yes?” you continued, your gaze searching his face now. “How would we even do that?”
You shifted slightly beneath him, enough to look at him properly.
“Would I stay with Ferrari and we keep everything… quiet?” you asked carefully. “Or would you want me with McLaren?”
There it was.
Not just the feeling—
but the reality of it.
The world attached to him.
The one that didn’t come quietly.
“Do you want to be hidden?” he asked instead.
It wasn’t accusatory.
If anything, it was… gentle.
Curious.
And that somehow made it harder to answer.
Because the truth was—
You didn’t know.
You exhaled softly, your fingers stilling against his skin.
“I don’t know,” you admitted.
A small pause.
“But I don’t know if I’m ready to be… seen like that either.”
Seen the way he was seen.
The way Alexandra was seen.
The way Lily used to be seen.
Watched. Picked apart. Talked about.
His gaze softened slightly at that.
Understanding.
Of course he understood.
“What if I’d want you with me at McLaren?” he asked quietly.
You smiled softly, “I’d love to be there for you,”
“Even if Lando finds out?” he asked, the question slipping out before he could stop it.
It wasn’t doubt in you. Not really.
But there was still something unresolved there—something quieter, more instinctive. A memory of losing, of coming second where he hadn’t expected to. And for all the certainty he felt with you, there was still that small, unwanted thought in the back of his mind—
Could it happen again?
Could he lose you, too?
He didn’t voice it like that.
Didn’t need to.
It lingered in the space between the words anyway.
But he should’ve known better.
Should’ve known that whatever Lando thought this was—whatever he wanted it to be—
You didn’t feel it.
Not even close.
If anything, things would be easier if Lando knew. Cleaner. Clearer. No more polite deflections, no more careful distance you had to keep rebuilding every time he crossed it again.
“Especially if he finds out,” you laugh, a little perplexed by your own brutal honesty.
A small pause.
“But I don’t know if I’m ready to be… in the spotlight like that either.”
Seen the way he was seen.
Watched. Picked apart. Talked about.
His gaze softened slightly at that.
Understanding.
Of course he understood.
“What if I’d want you with me at McLaren?” he asked quietly.
Then his hand found yours again—this time more intentionally.
His fingers lacing with yours, holding on.
Not loose.
Not hesitant.
Just… certain.
" I don’t want to hide you anymore,” he said quietly.
The words weren’t loud.
They didn’t need to be.
“I want people to know you’re with me.”
A beat.
“That I’m with you.”
That made your chest tighten.
Not in a way that scared you.
In a way that settled.
And for a moment, neither of you spoke again.
You just… stayed there.
Close. Quiet.
You breathed him in—warm skin, sunscreen, something faintly familiar that was just him. The steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your hand, the way his fingers absentmindedly traced slow patterns against your side.
You let yourself sink into it.
Oscar, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as still.
Because while you were holding onto the moment—
he was already thinking ahead.
Not in a way that pulled him away from you.
In a way that pulled you further into his world.
“What if…” he started, voice quieter now, but more certain than before.
You shifted slightly, tilting your head to look at him properly.
“What if next race—you come with me?”
There was a small pause, like he was giving you time to process it before continuing.
“And stay at McLaren,” he added. “Not… anything big. Just—”
His thumb brushed against your side again, slower this time.
“Stay in the background. With me.”
It wasn’t hesitation.
It was consideration.
Because this wasn’t about hiding you.
Not really.
If anything, there hadn’t been a second of doubt in him since last night.
This was about you.
About easing you into something that could be overwhelming if he threw you into it all at once.
The paddock.
The attention.
The shift from being someone adjacent to his world—
To being his.
“Austria?” you asked softly, even though you already knew the answer.
“Yes,” he nodded, watching you carefully now.
Not nervous.
But attentive.
Like your answer mattered more than the question itself.
You let out a small breath, your fingers absentmindedly tracing along his shoulder as you thought about it.
It wasn’t a small thing.
Not really.
But it didn’t feel overwhelming either.
Not when it was him asking.
“Let me check with my boss,” you said finally, your voice softer than before—but there was something else in it too.
Something that sounded a lot like yes.
Oscar noticed it instantly.
Of course he did.
A small smile tugged at his lips, subtle—but there.
“Yeah,” he murmured, nodding once. “Okay.”
His hand tightened slightly at your waist—not holding you back.
Just… keeping you there.
And for the first time, the idea of stepping into his world didn’t feel like something unknown.
It felt like something you were already walking toward.
❁✿❀❁✿❀
Sol’s Insta Story and Messages
❁✿❀❁✿❀
Oscar was attentive.
Probably the most attentive man you had ever met.
And more importantly—he was someone who kept his word.
So it shouldn’t have surprised you.
But it did anyway.
“No, you didn’t—!”
Your head snapped toward him so quickly you nearly gave yourself whiplash, eyes wide, your smile already stretching so far it almost hurt your cheeks.
“I did,” he replied simply. Calm. Certain.
And smiling at you in that way—
that exact way that made your heart stutter every single time.
Your gaze drifted away from him again, almost instinctively, back to what he had done.
To what he had created.
The sand shifted softly beneath your bare feet, still warm from the day, grains catching between your toes as you stepped forward slowly.
The last traces of sunlight clung to the horizon, painting the sky in soft pinks and golds before fading into dusk.
And then—
The candles.
Dozens of them.
Carefully placed, deliberate.
Soft, flickering lights leading you forward like something out of a dream, their glow dancing against the sand, against the low evening breeze, against you.
In the center of it all stood a small table, dressed in crisp white linen, more candles scattered across its surface—gentle, intimate.
And flowers.
So many flowers.
A large bouquet of white and blush roses rested nearby, petals soft and full, and another waited on the table itself, like he hadn’t been able to decide which version of beautiful you deserved more.
It was breathtaking.
“No, you didn’t…” you whispered again, softer this time.
More to yourself than to him.
But he heard you anyway.
Of course he did.
A quiet chuckle slipped past his lips as he stepped closer, his hands finding the small of your back—warm, grounding, steady.
“Come here,” he murmured gently, guiding you forward through the soft glow of candlelight.
Careful. Like the moment mattered.
Like you did.
He pulled out the chair for you with a small, exaggerated gesture.
“My lady,” he said, just dramatic enough to make your lips twitch.
You sat, still taking everything in, your eyes moving from the table… to the ocean… to the sky… and back again like you couldn’t quite decide where to look first.
“This looks amazing, Oscar,” you breathed, your voice full, soft, real.
He shrugged lightly as he moved to sit across from you, like it wasn’t anything special.
Like this wasn’t something he had clearly thought about. Planned.
“You deserve it,” he said quietly.
And there it was again.
That simplicity.
That certainty.
“And you deserve to be asked properly,” he added, his gaze steady on yours now, “not just in the heat of my… very uncontrolled emotions.”
That made your brows pull together slightly, your head tilting.
“What?”
Because to you—
it had been perfect.
Messy, maybe.
Unplanned.
But real.
“Yeah,” he nodded, almost to himself this time.
Then his hand reached across the table, finding yours without hesitation, fingers warm as they closed around it.
“You do.”
You shook your head slowly, your eyes never leaving his, your smile soft but unwavering.
You didn’t need more.
Not really.
But he did.
And somehow… that mattered just as much.
“So…” he started, a quiet laugh slipping out of him, something almost boyish breaking through his usual composure.
For the first time that evening, there was a flicker of nerves.
Real ones.
“Y/N M/N,” he said, a little softer now, thumb brushing absentmindedly over your knuckles, grounding himself, “will you forgive my slightly rushed timing…”
A pause.
“And do me the honor of being my girlfriend?”
Your breath caught.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
Just enough to make everything else feel… still.
The world narrowed to him.
To his voice.
To the way he was looking at you like this actually mattered.
Like you mattered.
Your heart stumbled over itself, racing too fast, warmth blooming across your cheeks as a quiet, disbelieving laugh slipped from your lips.
Butterflies erupted in your stomach, chaotic and overwhelming and good.
So good.
You squeezed his hand once.
Twice.
Grounding yourself.
And then you nodded.
“I’d be honored,” you said, your smile breaking fully now—bright, unfiltered, impossible to hide.
For a second, he just looked at you.
Like he needed to register it.
Like he needed to be sure.
And then—
“Fuck yeah,” he breathed, the words slipping out before he could stop them, his free hand lifting slightly like he’d just crossed a finish line.
You laughed, the sound soft and warm, blending into the quiet rhythm of the ocean behind you.
And then he was already leaning forward.
Drawn to you.
Like he couldn’t not.
His hand came up to your cheek, fingers warm, thumb brushing gently over your skin—slower this time. More deliberate.
Like he was allowed to now.
Like he finally believed it.
And when his lips met yours—
It wasn’t rushed.
It wasn’t overwhelming.
It was soft.
Warm.
Full of everything that had been building between you for weeks.
Months.
The kind of kiss that didn’t need urgency to feel intense.
Because it carried something deeper.
Something certain.
A quiet kind of right.
Goosebumps spread across your skin, your shoulders, your spine, your fingers tightening slightly around his as you leaned into it without hesitation.
And for a moment—
With the ocean behind you, the candles flickering around you, and his hand steady against your face—
Everything else faded.
There was no paddock.
No pressure.
No expectations.
Just him.
Just you.
And the beginning of something that already felt like it had always been there.
❁✿❀❁✿❀
Sol’s Insta Story
❁✿❀❁✿❀
One thing you should never do—ever—is underestimate the lung capacity of a high-performing athlete.
You were holding your own.
You really were.
But you were not a Formula 1 driver.
And right now—
It showed.
“How are you not even breaking a sweat?” you asked, breath catching halfway through the sentence, hands braced on your thighs for just a second longer than you’d like to admit.
The Spanish sun pressed heavy and golden against your skin, warmth sinking deep into your shoulders, your collarbones, the back of your neck.
Salt still lingered from your earlier swim, dried in faint traces across your skin, mixing now with the sheen of sweat forming as your pulse refused to settle.
Sand clung stubbornly to your feet and calves, grains shifting and sticking as you adjusted your stance, your muscles just starting to protest.
Oscar, meanwhile—
Looked unfairly fine.
A little flushed, maybe. Hair slightly out of place. Chest rising just a touch heavier than before.
But controlled.
Always controlled.
“You wanna give up?” he asked instead, twirling the frisbee lazily in his hand like he hadn’t just sprinted half the beach five seconds ago.
There was a hint of a smirk tugging at his mouth.
Cocky.
Annoyingly so.
And to make matters worse—
He looked worse in the most unfair way possible.
Because unlike you, he had fully committed to a dive earlier, sand clinging to his side, his shoulder, streaked along his torso like proof of effort.
Proof of winning.
“Never,” you shot back instantly, straightening again despite the burn in your legs, already lifting your arms, ready.
Prepared.
Determined.
His eyes flicked over you then—quick, instinctive—taking in the shift in your posture, the determination written so clearly across your face.
The way you refused to back down.
And something in his expression softened.
Barely.
Still amused.
But warmer now.
“Alright,” he murmured, almost to himself.
Then he threw it.
Not easy.
Not even close.
The frisbee cut clean through the air, faster than before, angled just enough to force you to move—really move.
“Oh, come on—!” you laughed, already pushing off the sand, feet slipping slightly before finding traction as you chased after it.
You stretched, reaching—
Fingers brushing plastic—
And missed.
Barely.
The frisbee hit the sand a few steps ahead, skidding to a stop as you slowed, breath catching in your chest.
A groan slipped from your lips as you bent forward, hands landing on your knees again, shaking your head.
“You’re evil,” you accused, glancing back at him over your shoulder, trying to catch your breath.
Oscar was already walking toward you, unbothered, entirely too pleased with himself.
“I went easy on you,” he replied calmly.
You let out a breathless laugh.
“That was easy?”
He hummed, like he was genuinely considering it.
“Relatively.”
You stared at him for a second. Taking in the way he looked, how the cap sat on his head, how the soft blush of effort looked on his cheeks, how his pale skin was taking on the softest tan. He was beautiful, you couldn’t and wouldn’t lie.
Then—
Without warning—
You grabbed the frisbee, spun, and launched it straight back at him.
Harder than you had all game.
“Hey—” he started, caught off guard for once as he stepped sideways, just managing to catch it against his chest.
A laugh broke out of him immediately after, low and surprised, eyes lighting up as they snapped back to you.
“That’s how we’re playing now?”
You straightened slowly, brushing sand off your legs, trying—and failing—not to smile.
“You said you were going easy on me,” you shrugged. “Thought I’d fix that.”
He watched you for a moment.
Really watched you.
The way your chest rose and fell.
The way your skin glowed under the sun.
The way the sun caught in your hair.
The way you looked at him—challenging, bright, alive.
And something in him shifted again.
Deeper this time.
More settled.
“Careful,” he said, softer now, though the edge of teasing was still there. “You might regret that.”
You tilted your head slightly, meeting his gaze without hesitation.
“Try me.”
A beat.
Then he smiled.
Not cocky this time.
Something else.
Something quieter.
And before you could react—
He ran.
Straight toward you.
“Wait—Oscar—!” you laughed, already stepping back, instinct kicking in as you turned to run for your escape—but he was faster.
Of course he was.
Always had been.
Always would be.
His arms wrapped around you from behind before you could get more than a few steps away, lifting you clean off the ground like it was nothing, a startled laugh bursting from your lips as your legs kicked instinctively.
“Oscar—!”
“You said try you,” he murmured near your ear, breath warm against your skin, laughter threading through his voice.
And then—
He kept walking.
Straight toward the water.
Your laughter turned into a mix of protest and disbelief as you twisted in his hold.
“No—no, don’t you dare—!”
Too late.
The water hit you both at once—cool, sharp, refreshing—pulling a gasp from your lungs as he let himself fall with you, the two of you disappearing beneath the surface in a mess of limbs and laughter.
When you came back up, breathless, pushing wet hair out of your face—
He was right there.
Close.
Still holding onto you.
Like he hadn’t let go once.
His hands steady at your waist, his chest rising just a little heavier now, drops of water clinging to his lashes, his jaw, the line of his neck.
And for a moment—
Everything else faded.
The game.
The teasing.
The noise of the beach behind you.
All of it.
Because the way he was looking at you now—
Soft.
Certain.
Unfiltered in a way he rarely allowed himself to be.
Like this—
You, laughing, breathless, wrapped up in him and the moment—
Was exactly where he wanted to be.
And for once—
There was nothing held back in it.
❁✿❀❁✿❀
oscarpiastri
oscarpiastri stayed a little longer
Liked by olliebearman, kimi.antonelli, mclarenf1, alex_albon and 1’045’321 Other’s
kimi.antonelli 😊👍
op81fan oh, so this man is TAKEN taken
oscarslove NOOOO MY HEART 🥺🥺
olliebearman great catch!
alex_albon did you or she win?
oscarpiastri me of course
charles_leclerc: ☀️☀️☀️
eclercsangel charles KNOWS something look at that reply
gridupdates the lipstick?????? OSCAR?????
lando nice cat
papayafans NOT HIM IGNORING THE ENTIRE POST AND COMMENTING ON THE CAT 😭
oscar4champ he soft launched im SICK
griddetective the second time actually ☝️ he already soft launched a woman monday morning after his GP win landoscarlover RIGHT!!! Does anyone know who she is? f1detective I'm working on it
f1tea pic 2 is INSANE behavior actually
kimiupdates kimi liking this after those rumors 😭😭😭
mclarenf1 well rested for spielberg 🧡
sunsetandcircuits “stayed a little longer” FOR WHO OSCAR
gridgirl THE HAND HOLDING??? im unwell
oscarpiastri it’s just a hand op81fan JUST A HAND????? SIR BE SERIOUS
papayawife whoever she is… she’s winning
oscarsoft he looks happy… like actually happy
f1rumours this confirms everything without confirming anything
✿❀ Let the Light in ❁✿
So, Oscar's in his soft launch era... are we all okay??
and what do we want to happen next?
taglist: @teamnovalak @anamiad00msday @engelsmoment @madd1115 @frankiejo04 @aerangi @dakotapaigelove @azldee @dazaisdogsblog @yumarkie @jennibahng @suns3treading @sassyangel16 @alwaysclassyeagle @moons-v @disappointednotsuprised24 @okcurran @esw1012 @okayarkay @sltwins @bhagyashreeghuge @mysteriousduckprincess @kay-bello @vinylphwoar @mclarensnumberone @taetae-armyyyyy @woninabillion04 @cherryhazee @shawnscurlz @csceclairs @daddyrafeslittleslut @theladybiers @piastripastry81 @be4rnellis @princessria127 @phosphen3-s @wiggly-yrath @artyyjia @chloclo @nilletellsstories @sunshinevansh @cherryniyaah @lora21 @marinasblogs-posts @blablabla2242 @dustyinkpages @applejackrootbeerhollis @pharmasennapuff @astrrlily @melissa66orion @dutchlionforev @gold66loveblog @bruhitsmoose @iceceweam9 @whistlef0rthechoir @omniandscared @vintageroses10 @eclipsiieevsx @br1adna @lagrandeourse @xyrillekl @sen-nes @fasterthanyous @noope306 @llicsa @liv1209 @houseoftwistedspirits
anything goes
Lando Norris x Amelie Dayman
Summary: This chapter follows Amelie during a relaxed, intimate Coachella weekend moment where she reflects on her journey—from joking with friends about past memories to opening up about the emotional weight of headlining and what it represents for her identity and culture.
Wordcount: 13.4 k
Warnings: none
full masterlist // request over here!
April 15th, 2026 - Palms Springs, CA
liked by goldenhourglow, midnightsky, and others
anythinggoes: emma chamberlain in ameliwood 🎙️🍷 a very unhinged coachella special with amelie dayman is out now — we got into everything and maybe nothing at all
View all 1,424 comments
velvetkiss: NOT “EMMA IN AMELIWOOD” I’M SCREAMING 😭 → goldendaze: best title ever → opaleyes: already iconic
midnightsky: them in BED with wine and a mic??? yeah this is gonna be chaotic → softamelie: unfiltered energy → ameliecore: i’m ready
rosesandsatin: coachella special AND amelie as a guest?? we won → moonlitlove: massive win → daydreaming: immediately playing
cityofangels: i just know this episode is gonna spiral in the best way → cinemagirl: no structure just vibes
noirangel: the chemistry between them is insane already → starlightdreams: best duo → silverscreen: need more
cherryglow: wine + bed + emma + amelie… what could possibly go wrong 😭 → opalmoon: everything → goldrush: and i’m here for it
hearteyesclub: i love when emma brings guests she actually vibes with → softlan: you can tell instantly
gridwatcher: this is about to be the most unserious podcast episode ever → speedlane: chaos incoming → papayapower: press play
midnightangel: the aesthetic alone??? soft lighting, wine, bed… i’m obsessed → daisydaze: cozy chaos → opaleyes: perfect
velvetrose: they’re either gonna talk about deep life stuff or absolutely nothing → goldendaze: no in between → noirvelvet: classic
dreamscape: i need clips IMMEDIATELY → moonlitlove: same
citylights: the way this already feels like a sleepover conversation → cinemagirl: intimate → aestheticcore: love it
softamelie: yeah this is gonna be my personality for the next week → hearteyesclub: same
goldenhourglow: this is giving 3am sleepover energy and i’m not ready 😭 → velvetkiss: EXACTLY → opaleyes: chaos incoming
sunkissedbabe: i already know they laughed more than they spoke
midnightlover: the wine glass is doing a LOT for the vibe → noirangel: essential prop → starlightdreams: method acting
petalsandpearls: i need them to make this a recurring thing immediately → rosesandsatin: series pls → moonlitlove: we deserve it
softsunset: this feels like we’re eavesdropping on a private convo → daisydaze: and i’m seated
glowtheory: the way emma only brings people she genuinely likes… yeah this is special → aestheticcore: you can tell → citylights: authentic
cherryblush: imagine being that mic just witnessing all the chaos → hearteyesclub: it deserves a raise → ameliecore: truly
runwayracing: coachella stories are about to go CRAZY i can feel it → velvetrose: no filters
dreamyvibes: this is gonna be one of those episodes people quote for years → midnightsky: i already know → ameliecore: iconic incoming
sunflare: the bed setup makes it feel so unserious i love it
papayabutterflies: i just KNOW they went off on random tangents for 20 minutes → speedlane: as they should → gridwatcher: no structure only vibes
cottoncandyglow: the crossover i didn’t know i needed but now can’t live without → opaleyes: same → goldrush: obsessed
wildflowerdream: two girls who can talk about anything actually talking about anything…
--------------
The bedroom carried that soft, lived-in warmth that only came after a few days of people moving in and out of it constantly, sunlight pouring in through the wide windows and settling lazily across the king-sized bed where everything seemed to be happening now instead of anywhere else in the house. Pillows were stacked carelessly against the headboard, sheets slightly wrinkled from being claimed as a makeshift recording space, and right in the middle of it all sat Amelie and Emma Chamberlain, cross-legged and relaxed, each of them wearing matching black baby tees with “Ameliewood” printed across the front like it had become more than just a show title—something closer to a shared joke, a badge, a moment frozen in time that hadn’t fully settled yet.
A small microphone setup rested between them, minimal but intentional, Emma’s phone propped carefully nearby as she leaned slightly forward, adjusting her posture in that familiar way she always did when she slipped into podcast mode, her energy shifting just enough to feel different without losing the ease that made it all feel like a conversation rather than anything structured.
—Okay,— Emma started, her voice warm, conversational, but carrying that subtle rhythm her listeners knew so well. —Hi guys, welcome back to Anything Goes. I’m Emma, obviously, and today is a very special episode because we are in Palm Springs, in a bed, surrounded by chaos…—
She paused just long enough to glance around the room, where laughter from somewhere in the house echoed faintly, the distant sound of people moving, talking, existing just outside the bubble they had created.
—…and I genuinely don’t think there could be a better way to do a Coachella special than this,— she continued, her tone shifting slightly, more excited now. —Because I am sitting here with one of this year’s headliners. Which is insane. Like… actually insane.—
Amelie huffed a quiet laugh beside her, tucking one leg slightly under the other, her fingers absentmindedly playing with the hem of her shirt, the word Ameliewood stretching slightly under her touch like she still wasn’t used to seeing it outside of the stage.
Emma turned fully toward her now, her expression softening but her eyes still bright with that mix of admiration and disbelief.
—You’re also the second youngest person to ever headline Coachella,— she added, emphasizing it just enough. —Which is… like, okay, casual. No big deal. Only beaten by Billie Eilish who did it at twenty, and you’re twenty-four…—
Amelie groaned softly under her breath, already shaking her head.
—Please don’t say it like that,— she muttered, half-laughing, half-hiding her face for a second.
Emma ignored her completely.
—And you’re also the first Latina woman to headline,— she continued, leaning into it now. —Sharing the weekend with Karol G, who’s headlining Sunday, which is also insane, like the power in that alone—
—Okay, stop,— Amelie cut in, laughing properly now, her hand reaching out to lightly push Emma’s arm. —You’re making it sound way bigger than it already feels.—
Emma raised an eyebrow immediately.
—It is that big,— she shot back, not even hesitating. —You just don’t want to admit it because you’re emotionally unstable.—
That made Amelie laugh again, softer this time, her shoulders relaxing as she leaned back slightly against the pillows, her gaze drifting for a second toward the open door where movement passed by—Hannah sitting somewhere on the floor just outside the frame, Alex half-visible leaning against the wall, Lando somewhere behind them talking quietly to someone, his presence felt even without looking directly.
It grounded her.
Emma noticed the glance but didn’t comment on it, instead shifting slightly as she smiled again, softer now.
—Anyway,— Emma continued, her tone easing back into something more conversational, less announcer and more best friend sitting cross-legged in bed, —before she tries to deflect again, please welcome my friend… my emotional support human since we were like fifteen… Amelie Dayman.—
Amelie let out a quiet laugh at that, ducking her head slightly before looking back up, her expression soft, a little shy in a way that didn’t match the person who had stood in front of thousands just nights ago.
—Hi,— she said simply, lifting one hand in a small wave toward the microphone like it made any sense.
—Hi,— Emma echoed, smiling at her for a second longer than necessary, like she was taking her in properly before continuing. —How are you feeling? And don’t give me a fake answer because I will call you out.—
Amelie exhaled through a small smile, her fingers still playing with the hem of her shirt as she thought about it, not rushing the answer.
—Um… I think I’m still processing,— she admitted finally, her voice quieter now, more honest. —Like, I don’t think it’s fully… landed yet. Which is probably good, because if it had, I think I would’ve blacked out on stage.—
Emma snorted softly.
—You almost did anyway,— she said, leaning back slightly against the headboard. —From my perspective, you looked like you were either about to cry or ascend.—
Amelie laughed, covering her face briefly.
—That’s exactly how it felt,— she said through her fingers, dropping her hands again. —Like I was either going to start crying mid-song or just… float away. There was no in-between.—
—That’s kind of iconic though,— Emma replied, shrugging lightly. —Like, if you’re going to lose it, at least do it as a Coachella headliner.—
Amelie shook her head, still smiling, her gaze drifting again toward the room outside, where Hannah leaned in just enough to silently mouth something exaggerated and supportive, earning a small laugh from Amelie before she looked back at Emma.
Emma watched that small exchange with a knowing smile, like she could map every piece of Amelie’s world just by the way her eyes moved, the way she anchored herself in the people around her before coming back to center. There was something softer in her expression now, less teasing, more observant, like she was shifting gears without making it obvious, easing the conversation into something that mattered a little more without losing the warmth that made it feel safe.
—But seriously,— Emma said after a second, her voice still gentle but carrying a quiet emphasis now, —you’re kind of taking over the world right now. Like… let’s just list it out for a second. You’re a Grammy winner, you’ve been touring non-stop, you’ve been everywhere, and now you just headlined Coachella.— She let out a small, incredulous laugh, shaking her head slightly. —Congrats, by the way. That’s insane.—
Amelie’s reaction was immediate, instinctive, her shoulders lifting just slightly as if trying to make herself smaller under the weight of it, though the smile that followed gave her away anyway, soft and grateful and still a little disbelieving.
—Thank you,— she said quietly, her voice carrying that same sincerity that always slipped through when she didn’t try to deflect too hard.
Emma tilted her head, studying her for a moment longer, like she wasn’t fully done yet.
—Out of all of that,— she continued, her tone shifting into something more curious now, more intentional, —with everything that’s happening, all the success, all the noise… what’s actually been the best part for you? Like, what do you enjoy the most right now? What do you actually celebrate?—
The question landed differently.
Not heavy, but real enough to make Amelie pause properly this time, her fingers stilling against the hem of her shirt as she leaned back just a little more into the pillows, her gaze drifting upward toward the ceiling like the answer might be somewhere in the quiet space above them rather than in the chaos of everything else.
A slow breath filled her chest before she spoke.
—It feels like a roller coaster,— she admitted, her voice softer now, more thoughtful, each word coming a little slower like she was choosing them carefully. —Like… all the feelings, all the emotions, everything just happening at once. There’s so much behind it that people don’t see, you know? All the preparation, the months of building something like that show, the pressure of getting it right…—
Her lips curved slightly, not quite a smile, more something reflective.
—And I feel really, really blessed,— she added, her eyes dropping back down, more grounded now. —Of course I do. But also… really responsible. And proud. Like, both things at the same time.—
Emma nodded subtly, not interrupting, letting her stay in it.
—Before the show,— Amelie continued, her voice dipping just a little, —I kept telling myself the only thing I wanted was to enjoy it. Like, genuinely enjoy it. Not think about how many people were there, not think about what it meant or what people were going to say after… just be there and feel it.—
A small breath left her, lighter this time.
—And I think I did,— she said, almost like she was reassuring herself as much as answering the question. —At least for parts of it. It felt like… me again, not everything around me.—
Emma’s expression softened at that, something almost proud settling across her face as she shifted slightly, pulling one leg in closer.
—Do you still get nervous?— she asked gently. —Like, before going on stage? Or has that gone away now that you’ve done it so many times?—
Amelie let out a quiet laugh at that, shaking her head immediately.
—No, I get really nervous,— she said honestly, not even pretending otherwise. —Like, my hands shake, my stomach drops, everything feels a bit too loud in my head right before I go on.—
She paused for half a second, her expression shifting again, softening into something steadier.
—But the second I step out there… it just disappears,— she added, her voice quieter now but more certain. —It’s weird. It’s like everything just… clicks into place. Like I remember exactly why I’m there.—
Her gaze drifted again, not to the room this time, but somewhere further, somewhere internal.
—It feels like home,— she said simply.
The words lingered in the air, soft but grounded in something real enough that Emma didn’t interrupt, didn’t joke, didn’t shift it away.
Amelie swallowed lightly before continuing, something deeper settling into her tone now.
—And it’s not just about me up there,— she added, her fingers tightening slightly against the fabric of her shirt again. —It’s also about what I represent. Like… being a Latina woman on that stage, headlining, knowing there are girls in that crowd who see themselves in me… that matters. A lot.—
Her voice didn’t waver, but there was a quiet weight behind it now, something that sat deeper than nerves or excitement.
—It feels like a responsibility,— she said. —But in a good way. Not something that scares me, just something I want to do right. I want to show them that they belong there too. That it’s possible.—
Emma exhaled softly, almost like she had been holding that breath without realizing, her expression settling into something more serious, more grounded than before.
—Yeah,— she said quietly. —You’re doing that. Whether you realize it or not.—
Amelie didn’t respond right away.
Her gaze dropped again, her shoulders relaxing just slightly as the weight of that sat with her, not overwhelming, just present.
Outside the room, laughter echoed faintly again, someone calling out something unintelligible, life continuing around them in that chaotic, familiar way that felt so separate from the quiet bubble they had created on the bed.
Amelie let out a small breath, softer now, her lips curving just slightly as she looked back at Emma.
—That’s the part I think I’m most proud of,— she said gently. —More than anything else.—
Emma stayed quiet for a second longer, letting that last part settle between them instead of immediately filling the space, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the seam of the pillow beside her as her gaze lingered on Amelie with something softer now, something that had shifted from admiration into something more personal, more rooted in history. There was a small smile pulling at her lips, but it wasn’t teasing this time, it was almost disbelieving in a way that felt warmer, like she was looking at her and seeing every version of her at once—the one sitting here now and all the ones that came before.
—Can we talk about how insane this actually is for a second?— Emma said finally, her voice still gentle but carrying a different kind of energy now, something more nostalgic, more grounded in where they had been rather than where they were.
Amelie let out a quiet huff of a laugh, already knowing exactly where she was going with it, her shoulders relaxing further into the pillows as she nodded slightly.
—Yeah,— she murmured.
Emma shifted, turning more fully toward her, one leg tucked under the other now as she leaned her elbow against her knee, her chin resting lightly in her hand as she looked at her like she was about to say something that had been sitting in her chest for a while.
—Like… this is something none of us imagined,— she continued, her tone thoughtful now. —Not me, not you, not Hannah. We’ve been coming to this festival every single year since what… 2019?—
A soft snort came from just outside the frame.
—2018,— Hannah corrected immediately, her voice cutting in from the floor with absolute confidence.
Emma turned her head slightly toward the door, eyebrows lifting.
—Oh my god, you’re right,— she laughed. —2018. Even worse. We were literal children.—
—We were so annoying,— Hannah added, not even hesitating.
Amelie laughed at that, a real one, her head tipping back slightly against the headboard as she covered her face for a second.
—We were unbearable,— she agreed.
Emma pointed at her instantly.
—You were the worst,— she said, half serious, half joking. —You were like, “guys, I’m going to perform here one day,” every five minutes.—
Amelie dropped her hands, groaning dramatically.
—Okay, I did not say it every five minutes,— she defended, though her smile gave her away.
Hannah leaned further into the doorway now, her grin wide, eyes bright with the kind of energy that came from remembering things too vividly.
—You literally stood in front of the main stage one year and were like,— she started, straightening up and putting on an exaggerated, theatrical version of Amelie’s voice, —“I’m going to be up there. Just wait.”—
Emma burst out laughing immediately.
—Stop,— Amelie groaned, hiding her face again, though she was laughing just as hard now. —I hate both of you.—
—No, you loved yourself actually,— Hannah shot back. —And you were right, which is the most annoying part.—
Emma shook her head, still laughing, but her expression softened again as she looked back at Amelie, something quieter settling into her features.
—But like… we used to come here just to exist,— she said, her voice calmer now. —To walk around, to see people, to get into things we probably shouldn’t have gotten into.—
—To lose our phones,— Hannah added immediately.
Amelie dropped her hands again, pointing at her.
—Oh my god,— she laughed. —Three years in a row.—
Emma blinked.
—Wait, three?—
—Three,— Hannah confirmed, holding up her fingers like evidence. —Every single year. First day. Gone.—
—That’s actually impressive,— Emma said, shaking her head.
Amelie laughed, her shoulders shaking slightly as she leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees now.
—I would just accept it at some point,— she admitted. —Like, “okay, cool, I guess I don’t have a phone anymore.”—
—You made out with someone the same year you lost your phone the second time,— Hannah added casually.
Emma’s head snapped toward her so fast it was almost violent, her eyes widening with a kind of delighted horror that immediately shifted the entire energy in the room.
—Oh my god, you’re bringing that up?— she said, already laughing, her hand flying up to cover her mouth like it would somehow contain it. —We are not doing this on the podcast.—
—No, no, we absolutely are,— Hannah insisted from the doorway, stepping further in now, fully committed, her grin borderline evil. —Because that was a historical moment.—
Amelie’s entire face dropped into her hands again, a long, muffled groan escaping her as she shook her head.
—I hate you both so much,— she mumbled into her palms.
Emma leaned forward immediately, pointing at her like she’d just been handed the best possible gift.
—No, because you can’t just say that and not elaborate,— she said, her voice sharp with excitement now. —You literally disappeared for like an hour and came back without your phone and with lip gloss completely gone.—
—Oh my god,— Amelie groaned louder, dragging her hands down her face slowly as if she could physically erase the memory. —Please stop.—
Hannah crossed her arms, leaning casually against the doorframe like she had all the time in the world.
—It was someone famous,— she added, sing-song, dragging it out just enough to make it worse.
Emma’s jaw dropped.
—I KNEW IT,— she practically shouted, turning back to Amelie. —I literally knew it. You were so weird about it after.—
Amelie sat up straighter, eyes narrowing slightly as she pointed between them.
—I was not weird,— she defended, though the flush creeping up her neck betrayed her instantly.
—You were so weird,— Hannah repeated, nodding firmly. —You wouldn’t tell us who it was, you just kept saying “it was a moment.”—
Emma doubled over laughing at that.
—“It was a moment” is insane,— she said, wiping under her eyes. —That means it was someone good.—
—Or someone bad,— Hannah countered.
—No, if it was bad she would’ve told us immediately,— Emma shot back.
Amelie made a strangled noise somewhere between a laugh and a protest, reaching for one of the pillows and throwing it blindly in their direction.
—I’m actually ending this episode right now,— she said, though she was smiling too much for it to hold any real threat.
The pillow missed completely, landing uselessly on the floor as both Emma and Hannah laughed harder, the kind of laughter that came from shared history, from memories that only made sense because they had all been there for them.
From the edge of the room, Alex finally spoke.
—Wait,— he said slowly, his voice cutting through just enough to pull their attention, his eyebrows slightly raised as he looked between them, something amused but also very much curious settling into his expression. —You made out with someone at Coachella and just… never told anyone who it was?—
Amelie turned her head toward him immediately, her eyes narrowing further.
—You are not getting involved in this,— she warned.
He held his hands up slightly in surrender, though the smile tugging at his mouth didn’t disappear.
—I’m just saying,— he shrugged lightly. —Feels like important information.—
—It’s not,— she shot back quickly.
Emma leaned closer to the mic again, barely containing herself.
—This is actually crazy because I know who it is,— she said, her voice dropping slightly like she was about to reveal classified information.
Amelie’s head snapped back toward her so fast it was almost comical.
—Emma,— she said, sharp, a warning wrapped in a smile.
Emma pressed her lips together, clearly fighting the urge, her shoulders shaking slightly.
—I’m not going to say it,— she promised, though her tone suggested she absolutely wanted to.
Hannah groaned dramatically.
—You’re no fun,— she said.
—No, I’m a good person,— Emma corrected, placing a hand over her chest.
Amelie pointed at her again.
—For once,— she added.
The tension broke instantly, laughter spilling through the room again, lighter now, the kind that softened the edges of everything else they had been talking about. The past didn’t feel heavy or distant in moments like this—it felt close, alive, stitched into who they were now in a way that made everything else make more sense.
Emma eventually leaned back again, catching her breath as she looked at Amelie, her expression shifting back into something softer, though the amusement still lingered in her eyes.
—But seriously,— she said, her tone easing down again, more grounded now. —We used to stand in those crowds. Like, actually in them. Sweaty, dehydrated, losing our minds over whoever was on stage.—
Amelie laughed softly at that, her shoulders relaxing again as she leaned back against the headboard, her gaze drifting for a second like she could see those versions of them layered over everything.
—I remember 2024 so clearly,— she said, her voice quieter now, more reflective. —Like… that was the first time I performed here.—
Emma nodded immediately.
—You closed with that line,— she said, pointing at her. —I remember it exactly.—
Hannah didn’t even hesitate.
—Coachella, see you back here when I headline,— she recited, almost perfectly, her grin widening at the end.
Amelie let out a soft, almost disbelieving laugh, shaking her head.
—I can’t believe I said that,— she admitted.
—You manifested it,— Emma said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
The room went a little quieter at that.
Not heavy.
Just… still.
Amelie’s gaze dropped slightly, her fingers playing again with the hem of her shirt, the word Ameliewood stretching faintly under her touch.
—I think I just… wanted it so badly,— she said softly. —Like, I didn’t even know how it would happen, or when, but I just knew I wanted to be back here in a bigger way.—
Emma shifted again, pulling her legs in closer beneath her as her curiosity sharpened into something more intentional, the kind of question that wasn’t just about the moment itself but everything behind it, everything that had led up to that one phone call that changed the scale of her life entirely.
—Okay, wait,— she said, leaning forward slightly, her tone quickening with interest. —Where were you when you found out? Like… who told you? What was the situation? I need the full thing.—
Amelie let out a soft breath at that, her head tipping back slightly against the headboard as if she could rewind to it just by closing her eyes for a second, her fingers still absentmindedly playing with the fabric of her shirt while she searched for the exact feeling of it, not just the facts.
—I was in my apartment,— she started, her voice slower now, more thoughtful, like she was stepping carefully through the memory instead of rushing it. —In New York. I think… yeah, I had just gotten back from rehearsals for tour stuff, nothing crazy, just a normal day.—
Her lips curved faintly, but there was something softer in it, something almost disbelieving even now.
—I’m usually really loud,— she added, glancing at Emma briefly with a small smile. —Like… you know this. I love to scream, I love to make things dramatic, I love a reaction.—
Emma nodded immediately.
—Oh, I know,— she said under her breath, amused.
Amelie huffed a quiet laugh, shaking her head slightly.
—But this one was different,— she continued, her voice lowering just a little. —My manager called me… and it was like a three-way call with my mom already on it. Which already made me nervous, because I was like… why is my mom here? What is happening?—
Emma’s eyebrows lifted, already hooked.
—That’s terrifying,— she said.
—Exactly,— Amelie nodded. —So I pick up and Carla’s like, “hey… so Coachella reached out. They want you to headline Friday.”—
She paused.
Not for effect.
Just because the memory still sat there, heavy and strange in a way that didn’t quite match the version of it everyone else saw now.
—And it just… landed,— she said quietly. —Like, really heavy. I didn’t scream, I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything. I just… sat there.—
Emma blinked.
—No way,— she said softly.
Amelie nodded slowly, her gaze drifting somewhere unfocused.
—I was in shock for like five minutes,— she admitted. —Full silence. My mom was crying, Carla was talking, and I was just… staring at nothing. Like my brain couldn’t catch up to what they were saying.—
A small breath left her, her shoulders rising and falling gently.
—And then I was like… okay,— she added, her tone shifting slightly, something steadier slipping in. —Let’s do it.—
Emma smiled at that, something almost proud in the way she looked at her.
—Just like that?—
—Just like that,— Amelie repeated, though her smile carried a hint of something deeper. —But I knew what it meant. Like… immediately. The responsibility of it, the scale of it… everything.—
Her fingers tightened slightly against the fabric of her shirt again, grounding herself as she continued.
—We had already started talking about extending the Short n’ Sweet tour,— she explained, glancing briefly at Emma again. —Like taking it to North and South America because of Man’s Best Friend, everything was kind of moving in that direction…—
She paused again, shaking her head faintly.
—And I was like, no,— she said, more firmly now. —Stop everything. We need to focus on this.—
Emma’s expression softened further, her body language mirroring the weight of that decision.
—That’s huge,— she murmured.
—Yeah,— Amelie nodded. —Because I didn’t want it to just be… another show. I really wanted it to feel like me. Like… fully me. And also show what I’m capable of, you know? Not just musically, but everything.—
Emma leaned in slightly, her interest deepening, her voice quieter now but more focused.
—How did you even start with that?— she asked. —Like… how do you come up with what the message is for something that big?—
Amelie smiled at that, a real one this time, something warmer, more excited slipping through the reflection.
—I think it was a mix of things,— she said. —But honestly, I just wanted it to feel like me. That was the main thing. If it didn’t feel like me, then it didn’t matter how big it was.—
Her eyes lit up slightly as she continued, something more animated creeping into her expression.
—And I remember reading this tweet,— she added, a small laugh escaping her. —That literally described it perfectly. It said something like… “give a Broadway kid unlimited budget”—and I was like, yeah. That’s exactly it.—
Emma laughed softly.
—That’s so accurate it’s actually insane,— she said.
—Right?— Amelie grinned. —Because that’s what it felt like. Like all the theater kid parts of me just… got to exist without limits.—
Her tone softened again after that, the excitement settling into something more personal, more grounded.
—But also… it was kind of me telling my story a little,— she admitted. —Like, arriving to this country, trying to figure things out, fighting for what I wanted… all of that is in there, even if it’s not super obvious.—
Emma didn’t interrupt.
She just listened.
Amelie let out a small breath, her gaze dropping slightly before lifting again, steadier now.
—And I loved that,— she said, her voice quiet but certain. —Like… I fucking loved it. Every part of it. Even the hard parts, even the stressful parts. It felt like… mine.—
The room went still for a second after that, not empty, just full in a different way, like the weight of everything she had just said needed a moment to settle into the space around them.
Emma let that sit for a beat, her fingers tapping lightly against her knee as she nodded, like she was piecing something together in real time, her expression shifting from soft admiration into something a little more thoughtful, a little more analytical in the way she always did when a conversation started to lean into something bigger than just personal experience.
—We’ve seen people go up there and just… perform,— she started slowly, choosing her words with care but not losing that conversational tone that made everything feel natural. —Like, have fun, sing their songs, give the crowd a good time, which is amazing, obviously, but we’ve also seen people use that stage to say something. To make a statement.—
Her gaze stayed on Amelie, steady, curious, not confrontational but definitely intentional now.
—And the thing with you,— she continued, her voice lowering just slightly, —is that you kind of have both happening at the same time. Like, you’re giving this huge, theatrical, fun, insane show… but there’s also something bigger sitting on your shoulders.—
Amelie’s fingers stilled again against the hem of her shirt, her posture shifting just a fraction as she listened.
Emma leaned in a little more, her brows pulling together slightly, not in confusion but in emphasis.
—I mean, you’re representing women,— she said. —You’re representing your own community. That’s… a lot. That’s not a small thing to carry, especially on a stage like that.—
The room felt quieter again, not empty, just focused.
—And I keep thinking about it this year,— Emma added, her tone picking up a hint of excitement again, —because we have all these massive moments happening. Like, Bad Bunny doing the Super Bowl, which is insane, and now you, and Karol G headlining Coachella…—
She shook her head slightly, almost in disbelief.
—What do you want to come out of that?— she asked finally, her voice softer again, but grounded. —Like… what impact do you hope this moment has? Not just for you, but for everything it represents right now in American culture?—
Amelie didn’t answer immediately.
Her gaze dropped for a second, her fingers pressing lightly into the fabric of her shirt before relaxing again, her shoulders rising with a slow inhale as she let the question settle fully instead of rushing through it. There was something quieter in her expression now, something more inward, like she was stepping out of the noise of everything surrounding her and into something more personal, more honest.
—Honestly… I think it’s just the opportunity to change people’s minds,— she said finally, her voice calm, not overly rehearsed, just real in a way that landed softer but deeper.
Emma didn’t interrupt.
She just listened.
Amelie’s gaze lifted again, not fully meeting Emma’s at first, but somewhere in between, like she was thinking out loud more than performing an answer.
—What I love the most,— she continued, her tone warming slightly, —is seeing people here… like, people who maybe didn’t grow up with the same music, the same culture, the same language… and they’re still there. Singing. Loving it. Fighting for us in a way.—
Her lips curved faintly, something softer, almost emotional threading through it.
—That’s really special to me,— she added. —Because it means something is shifting. Even if it’s small, even if it’s slow… it’s happening.—
Emma’s expression softened even more, her body going still like she didn’t want to break the moment.
Amelie glanced down briefly, her fingers brushing against her shirt again before she continued, her voice dipping just slightly.
—And I think Benito said it really well,— she said, referencing Bad Bunny again without needing to explain further. —Like… we’re a community, but at the end of the day, we’re not something people should be afraid of. We’re not stereotypes. We’re not… whatever people decide we are.—
Her gaze lifted fully now, steady, grounded.
—We’re just people,— she said simply. —With feelings. With dreams. With stories that matter the same way anyone else’s do.—
The words didn’t come out heavy.
They came out certain.
—So I think that’s what I want to show,— she finished, her voice softening just a fraction. —That we’re here. That we’ve always been here. And that we’re not going anywhere.—
Emma stayed quiet for a second after that, her eyes lingering on Amelie in a way that felt more personal than anything she had said before, like she wasn’t just listening as a host anymore but as someone who had watched all of this unfold from the very beginning, someone who understood the weight of it in a way that didn’t need to be explained. Her fingers toyed absentmindedly with the edge of the pillow beside her, her expression thoughtful, softer now, but there was something else there too—something a little more concerned, a little more protective.
—Do you ever get scared of it?— she asked finally, her voice quieter, careful not to break the atmosphere they had built. —Like… not the performance itself, but the emotions. Everything hitting you at once up there. Do you ever feel like you might just… lose it?—
The question lingered differently.
Not heavy in a suffocating way, but real enough that Amelie didn’t immediately brush it off or laugh it away like she might have done before. Her fingers stilled completely against the hem of her shirt, her gaze dropping for a second as she considered it, actually considered it instead of defaulting to something easier.
Amelie inhaled slowly, her chest rising just a little deeper this time, her eyes dropping toward her hands as if the answer might be sitting somewhere there instead of in the space between them. There was a small pause, not empty but full of something quieter, more vulnerable, the kind of hesitation that came from deciding whether to say something honestly or soften it into something easier.
—Yeah,— she admitted finally, her voice softer than before, almost careful. —Sometimes it feels like it’s… right there. Like if I let myself think about it for too long, or if I actually feel everything that’s happening in that moment, I’ll just—
The bedroom door opened before she could finish, the soft click of the handle cutting gently through the conversation, followed by the faint, familiar sound of paws against the floor and the low rustle of movement that instantly shifted the energy in the room without breaking it completely.
Lando stepped in a second later, Charlie weaving just slightly ahead of him, tail wagging like he had somewhere important to be, while Lando balanced two iced coffees in his hands with surprising care, his phone tucked loosely between his fingers. The morning light caught him from behind for a second, framing him in that soft, golden glow before he fully stepped into the room, his gaze landing on Amelie almost immediately, like it always did.
Her attention slipped from Emma without hesitation, her entire expression softening in a way that was instinctive, unguarded, her shoulders relaxing just a fraction as she watched him walk in. His eyes flicked briefly toward Emma in acknowledgment, a small nod, something polite and easy, before returning to Amelie with that same quiet focus.
He didn’t say anything at first.
He just leaned in.
One of the coffees balanced carefully in one hand as he bent slightly, his free hand coming up to rest lightly against her cheek, fingers brushing her skin in a way that felt grounding without being overwhelming. His lips pressed softly against hers, a quick kiss, nothing dramatic, nothing for anyone else in the room—just something small and familiar that settled into her like a breath she hadn’t realized she needed.
—Hi,— he murmured quietly against her, just for her.
Amelie smiled into it, soft and immediate.
—Hi,— she whispered back.
He pulled away just enough to hand her one of the iced coffees, the condensation already forming against the plastic, cold against her fingers as she took it, before passing the other to Emma with an easy, casual motion.
—Thanks,— Emma said, already smiling, watching them with that same amused fondness she always had.
Lando shrugged lightly.
—Figured you’d need it,— he said, his tone easy, before dropping his phone onto the bed and letting himself fall back against the pillows beside Amelie like he had been there the entire time.
Charlie didn’t hesitate.
The second Lando settled, he jumped up onto the bed with an excited little huff, a toy clutched proudly in his mouth as he climbed over Lando’s legs and made his way straight to Amelie, tail wagging furiously as he nudged himself into her space like he belonged there just as much.
Amelie let out a soft laugh, her hand immediately coming up to cradle his face, fingers brushing through his fur as she leaned down slightly.
—Hi, baby,— she murmured warmly, her voice melting into something softer as she pressed a quick kiss to the top of his head.
Charlie dropped the toy into her lap, clearly satisfied, before settling there comfortably, pressed against her as if completing some unspoken routine.
The moment lingered for a second, warm, familiar, before Amelie leaned back again, adjusting slightly so Charlie stayed comfortably in place, her iced coffee resting loosely in her hand as she turned her attention back toward Emma like the conversation hadn’t fully left her.
—What I was saying,— she picked up gently, her voice quieter now but steadier, —is that I kind of have to… disconnect a little.—
Her fingers traced lightly over the plastic cup, condensation gathering under her touch as she spoke, her gaze drifting briefly before settling again.
—Not because I want to,— she added honestly. —I actually wish I could feel everything in real time, like fully, but if I do… I won’t get through it. I’ll cry the entire show. Like, genuinely, it would be a mess.—
There was a small smile tugging at her lips at that, self-aware, soft.
—So I just… put it somewhere else for a bit,— she continued. —And then it hits me after. When I’m off stage, or when I’m alone, or when everything slows down.—
She shrugged slightly, a small, almost helpless gesture.
—It’s like delayed emotion,— she said.
A quiet voice cut in beside her.
—Don’t worry, I cry for you,— Lando muttered without looking up from his phone.
Amelie turned her head instantly.
—Shut up,— she shot back, though there was no bite to it, only a hint of a smile pulling at her lips.
Emma laughed immediately, bright and unfiltered, her head tipping back slightly as she looked between them.
—No, it’s actually true,— she said, pointing lightly at Lando like she was presenting evidence. —Every time I go to one of your shows and he’s there, he cries. Every single time.—
Lando scoffed softly, finally glancing up.
—I don’t cry every time,— he argued, though it sounded weak even to him.
Emma raised an eyebrow.
—You cried on Friday,— she said flatly.
A beat.
—Of course I did,— he replied, like it was obvious, dropping his gaze back to his phone as if that somehow made it less of a thing.
Amelie let out a soft laugh at that, something warmer, more grounded, her shoulder nudging lightly into his as she shook her head.
—He was worse than me,— she added, glancing at Emma.
—That’s not true,— Lando said immediately, though there was a small smile tugging at his mouth now.
Emma leaned in slightly, amused.
—No, it is,— she insisted. —I literally saw you. You were trying to hide it and it made it worse.—
Lando huffed under his breath, but he didn’t deny it again.
Amelie’s fingers moved absentmindedly through Charlie’s fur as she smiled softly, her gaze lingering on Lando for just a second longer than necessary, something quieter settling behind it now, something that felt like appreciation more than anything else.
—See,— she murmured lightly, —I don’t need to cry on stage. I have him for that.—
Lando rolled his eyes, though the corner of his mouth lifted anyway.
Emma watched that exchange with a grin that only grew wider the longer it went on, like she had just been handed the perfect transition without even trying, her body shifting slightly as she leaned back against the headboard again, one leg tucked under the other while she adjusted the mic between them with a small, deliberate movement.
—Okay, wait,— she said, her tone picking up again, lighter now, teasing slipping back in like it had never left. —Now that the emotional vulnerability segment is over and we’ve confirmed Lando cries more than you do…—
—That’s not confirmed,— Lando cut in immediately, not even looking up this time.
Emma ignored him completely.
—…I have a very important question,— Emma continued, her lips curving into something knowingly mischievous as she shifted her weight slightly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear while looking straight at Amelie. —Are you planning to actually enjoy the rest of the weekend like a normal person, or are you going to stay locked in this house processing your life forever?—
Amelie let out a soft laugh at that, the sound lighter now, easier, her shoulders relaxing as she leaned back more comfortably against the pillows, one hand still resting absentmindedly over Charlie as her fingers moved through his fur in slow, grounding strokes.
—No, I want to go out,— she said quickly, almost like she had been waiting for the question. —That’s literally why I was so happy I got Friday. Like… I get to actually enjoy Saturday and Sunday without being in my head the whole time.—
Emma’s eyebrows lifted immediately, interest sharpening into something more playful.
—Oh,— she hummed, dragging the sound out just enough to make it obvious she was about to push further. —Enjoy it how?—
Amelie rolled her eyes lightly, already knowing exactly where this was going, though the small smile tugging at her lips betrayed her.
—Just… watch people, hang out, be in the crowd for once,— she said, trying to sound casual, though her fingers had started fidgeting slightly against Charlie’s fur again.
Emma tilted her head, unimpressed.
—Yeah, yeah, that’s cute,— she said, waving her hand dismissively. —Who do you want to see?—
There it was.
Amelie’s reaction was immediate.
A small pause.
A barely-there inhale.
And then the faintest blush creeping up her neck.
Emma’s grin widened instantly.
—Oh my god,— she said under her breath, already laughing. —It’s someone specific.—
Amelie groaned softly, dropping her head back against the headboard for a second like she could avoid it entirely.
—Emma,— she warned, though there was no real resistance in it.
—No, say it,— Emma insisted, leaning closer, her eyes bright with amusement. —You have to say it now.—
Amelie pressed her lips together, trying—and failing—not to smile.
—Obviously I want to see Justin,— she admitted finally, her voice softer, a little more shy than anything she had said the entire episode.
Emma let out a loud, victorious laugh.
—I KNEW IT,— she said immediately, pointing at her. —I literally knew it.—
From beside her, Lando made a quiet noise under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed laugh.
Amelie turned her head toward him instantly, narrowing her eyes slightly.
—Don’t start,— she warned.
He raised his hands in mock innocence, though the grin tugging at his mouth gave him away completely.
—Me? Never,— he said.
Emma was already fully leaning into it.
—Wait, no, this is serious,— she said, shifting her body toward Amelie again. —Explain. Because I feel like this is deep.—
Amelie exhaled through a small laugh, her fingers coming up to push lightly through her hair as she sat up a little straighter, like she had to justify it properly.
—No, it is,— she admitted, nodding slightly. —Like… I’ve been a fan of him since I was nine. Nine, Emma.—
—That’s actually insane,— Emma said, shaking her head.
—No, like… insane,— Amelie repeated, her eyes widening slightly as she spoke, the embarrassment mixing with something more genuine. —If I wasn’t performing this year, I was still coming to Coachella just to see him. Like, that was the plan.—
Lando let out a quiet huff of a laugh at that, finally looking up from his phone.
—You’re obsessed,— he said simply.
Amelie turned toward him immediately, grabbing the small mic between her and Emma and—without hesitation—shoving it toward his mouth.
—Say that again,— she challenged.
He didn’t even hesitate.
—You’re obsessed,— he repeated into the mic, completely deadpan.
Emma burst out laughing.
Amelie pulled the mic back toward herself, shaking her head, though she was smiling.
—I am not obsessed,— she defended, even as her tone softened slightly. —It’s just… different.—
Emma leaned in, intrigued again.
—Different how?—
Amelie hesitated for half a second, her gaze dropping briefly before lifting again, more thoughtful now.
—I’ve met a lot of people I grew up loving,— she said slowly. —Like… Taylor Swift, Christina Aguilera, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus…—
Emma nodded along immediately.
—Casual,— she muttered.
Amelie huffed a small laugh.
—But with him it’s just…— she paused, searching for the right words, her fingers tightening slightly against Charlie’s fur. —It’s different. He was like… my first love. You know?—
Lando made another noise beside her, this one more amused.
—Your first love,— he repeated, glancing at her now with a raised eyebrow.
Amelie didn’t even look at him this time, already grabbing the mic again and pushing it toward him with zero hesitation.
—Say it louder,— she shot back.
He leaned slightly toward it, completely unfazed.
—Her first love,— he repeated, even more clearly.
Emma was practically doubled over laughing now.
—This is amazing,— she said, wiping under her eyes.
Amelie pulled the mic back again, though she couldn’t stop smiling now, a little embarrassed but not enough to hide it.
—I’m serious,— she insisted, glancing back at Emma. —Like, I couldn’t even stay to watch him last weekend because I was so exhausted after my set. We left early and I was actually devastated.—
Emma’s expression softened slightly.
—That’s actually heartbreaking,— she said.
—It was,— Amelie nodded, her lips pressing together briefly. —So this weekend I’m staying. I don’t care what happens, I’m staying.—
Lando tilted his head slightly, watching her.
—You’re going to cry,— he said.
Amelie pointed at him instantly.
—Don’t speak that into existence,— she warned.
He shrugged lightly.
—You cried watching him on YouTube last year,— he added.
Emma gasped.
—Oh my god, of course she did,— she said, delighted.
Amelie dropped her head into her hands for a second.
—I hate all of you,— she muttered, though her shoulders were shaking slightly with laughter.
Emma leaned closer again, her tone shifting just slightly, more curious now.
—Wait, have you met him?—
Amelie shook her head immediately.
—No,— she said, a little too quickly.
Emma blinked.
—Wait, what?—
—And I don’t want to,— Amelie added, just as fast.
That made both Emma and Lando pause.
—Okay, that’s weird,— Emma said, narrowing her eyes slightly.
Amelie lifted her head again, her expression softer now, more honest.
—I don’t know… I just want to keep that feeling,— she explained. —Like, I want to still be a fan of someone. I don’t want it to turn into… anything else.—
Emma’s expression shifted immediately at that, the teasing still lingering at the edges but something more thoughtful settling in, like she actually understood what Amelie meant in a way that didn’t need to be picked apart or turned into a joke. Her fingers tapped lightly against the mattress for a second, her gaze staying on Amelie as she nodded slowly.
—That’s actually really fair,— she admitted, softer now. —Like… once you meet someone, it changes it. Whether you want it to or not.—
Amelie nodded faintly, her grip absentmindedly tightening in Charlie’s fur as if grounding herself in something simple, something real.
—Exactly,— she murmured. —And I don’t want to lose that. Not yet at least.—
There was a small pause after that, the kind that didn’t feel awkward, just… full. Emma let it sit for a beat longer, like she was about to move on, but then something seemed to click in her head, her posture shifting slightly as a sudden spark of excitement lit up her expression.
—Wait,— she said, sitting up a little straighter, her tone changing completely. —This actually reminds me of something.—
Amelie glanced at her, curious now, eyebrows lifting slightly.
—What?—
Emma didn’t answer right away, already turning slightly to the side, reaching toward the nightstand where her tote bag had been half-forgotten among the mess of cables and random things they had brought into the room. She dug through it for a second, moving things around with quick, purposeful motions until she finally pulled out a slightly worn envelope, the edges soft from time, the paper no longer crisp.
—Okay,— she said, holding it up between them with a small, almost disbelieving smile. —So… I actually found this when I was cleaning out my house.—
Amelie’s eyes narrowed slightly, curiosity sharpening.
—What is it?—
Emma exhaled a small laugh, shaking her head like she still couldn’t quite believe it herself.
—It’s… so embarrassing,— she warned, though she was already smiling wider now. —We wrote this when we were like… sixteen. Maybe even younger.—
From the doorway, Hannah leaned in immediately.
—Oh my god,— she said, already recognizing it. —No way you brought that.—
Amelie’s entire expression shifted.
—Wait… no,— she said slowly, realization hitting. —Is that…—
Emma nodded, biting back a grin.
—Yeah,— she confirmed. —It’s the list.—
Silence.
A very specific kind of silence.
The kind that carried memory inside it.
Amelie stared at the envelope for a second longer, her fingers stilling completely in Charlie’s fur, her breath catching just slightly as something old and distant suddenly felt very, very close again.
—You’re lying,— she murmured, though her voice had already softened.
—I’m not,— Emma said, shaking her head as she carefully opened it. —I found it while I was moving out, and I was like… okay, I have to bring this. Especially for this episode.—
Hannah let out a small, incredulous laugh from the doorway.
—This is insane timing,— she said.
Emma pulled out a folded piece of paper, worn in the middle from being opened and closed too many times years ago, and smoothed it out carefully against her leg before holding it out toward Amelie.
—This is yours,— she said simply.
Amelie didn’t take it immediately.
Her eyes scanned it first, like she could already see the words without fully opening it, like the memory of writing it was sitting just beneath the surface, waiting.
—Open it,— Emma encouraged softly.
Amelie hesitated for a second longer, her fingers hovering just above the paper before finally taking it, the texture of it softer than she expected, worn in a way that made it feel fragile despite having survived years tucked away somewhere forgotten. There was something oddly intimate about it, about holding a version of herself that had existed before everything—before the tours, before the awards, before the stages that had seemed impossibly far away back then. Her thumb traced absentmindedly along the fold before she slowly opened it, the crease resisting slightly before giving in, revealing the uneven handwriting that immediately made her chest tighten.
—Oh my god,— she breathed, the words barely louder than a whisper, a small, disbelieving smile already forming as her eyes moved across the page.
Emma leaned closer instantly, her shoulder pressing lightly into Amelie’s as she tried to peek, unable to hide her curiosity even though she had already read it before.
—It’s so cringe,— she warned again, though there was no real conviction behind it, only fondness.
—No, it’s…— Amelie shook her head faintly, her voice trailing off as she kept reading, something softer settling over her expression, something quieter, like she had just stepped into a memory she hadn’t visited in years. —It’s not cringe… it’s just…—
She didn’t finish the sentence.
She didn’t need to.
Her eyes flicked down the list again, slower this time, more intentional, and a small laugh slipped out of her, light and breathy, disbelief threaded through it as she lifted her gaze toward Emma.
—I wrote “headline Coachella,”— she said, almost like she was confirming it out loud rather than reading it.
Emma let out a quiet, incredulous laugh.
—Yeah,— she nodded. —You did.—
Hannah leaned further into the room, her arms crossing loosely as she watched, her grin softer now, less teasing and more nostalgic.
—You were very serious about that one,— she added.
Amelie’s lips pressed together briefly, her gaze dropping back to the paper, her fingers tightening slightly around it as something in her chest shifted—not overwhelming, just… full.
—That one’s done,— Emma said lightly, nudging her shoulder. —Check.—
Amelie huffed a quiet laugh through her nose, nodding faintly, her eyes moving further down the list.
—“Win a Grammy,”— she read under her breath, her smile growing just slightly.
—Also done,— Emma pointed out immediately.
—“Become an EGOT,”— Amelie continued, her eyebrows lifting slightly.
Lando let out a low whistle from beside her, leaning back against the headboard, one arm draped lazily behind her as he glanced at the paper.
—That’s a casual one,— he muttered.
Amelie nudged him lightly with her elbow without looking up, though the smile tugging at her lips deepened.
—“Sing in Times Square for New Year’s Eve,”— she went on, her voice softer now.
—You did that in like… what, 2023?— Emma added.
Amelie nodded faintly.
—Yeah,— she murmured.
Her eyes kept moving.
—“Vogue cover… Met Gala…”— she listed quietly, almost to herself now, like she was taking inventory of a life that had once only existed in imagination.
Emma watched her carefully, the teasing completely gone now, replaced by something more observant, more aware of the shift happening right in front of her.
—Keep going,— she encouraged gently.
Amelie swallowed lightly, her gaze dropping further down the page, her finger tracing along the lines as she read silently for a second before letting out another small, disbelieving laugh.
—I wrote “The Muppet Show,”— she said, shaking her head faintly.
Lando leaned in slightly.
—You did that one too,— he reminded her.
—I know,— she laughed softly. —I just… forgot it was even on here.—
—“Make a Christmas album,”— Emma added, peeking over her shoulder.
—Done,— Amelie nodded.
—“Have a song hit number one,”— Hannah chimed in from the doorway.
—Done,— Emma echoed, counting them off on her fingers now.
The list kept shrinking.
Or maybe growing.
It was hard to tell.
Amelie’s breathing had slowed without her noticing, her shoulders settling deeper into the pillows as the weight of it all started to shift into something quieter, something less overwhelming and more… real.
—“Host or perform on SNL,”— she read next.
—You killed that,— Emma said immediately.
Amelie smiled faintly, her eyes softening just a little more.
—“Concert at the Zócalo,”— she continued, her voice dipping slightly.
—You’re literally about to do four,— Lando added, glancing at her with a small, proud smile.
Her lips pressed together again, this time a little tighter, emotion flickering briefly behind her eyes before she blinked it away, continuing down the list.
—“Super Bowl halftime show… Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show… Glastonbury…”— she murmured, those ones still sitting untouched, still waiting.
Emma didn’t interrupt.
She just let her read.
There was another pause.
A longer one this time.
Amelie’s finger stopped midway down the page, her expression shifting slightly, something between amused and… a little bittersweet.
—Oh my god,— she said softly.
Emma tilted her head.
—What?—
Amelie let out a small, breathy laugh, shaking her head as she glanced up briefly before looking back down.
—“Be the One Less Lonely Girl,”— she read aloud, the words sounding almost surreal coming from her now.
Emma’s mouth dropped open immediately, already laughing.
—Stop,— she said. —You actually wrote that?—
—Of course she did,— Hannah snorted from the doorway. —We were obsessed.—
Amelie covered part of her face with her hand, laughing quietly, though there was something softer underneath it, something that didn’t quite match the humor.
—I was so serious about that,— she admitted.
Lando leaned slightly closer, peering at the paper with a small grin tugging at his lips.
—That one might be difficult,— he said lightly.
Amelie let out a small exhale, her smile lingering but shifting into something more wistful now, her gaze dropping back to the words.
—Yeah,— she murmured. —That one’s… not happening.—
Emma tilted her head, still half amused, half curious.
—Why not?—
Amelie glanced up at her, a small shrug lifting one shoulder.
—Because the last time he did it was at his wedding,— she said simply. —For Hailey.—
A beat of silence followed that, not awkward, just… understanding.
Emma’s expression softened immediately.
—Oh,— she said quietly.
Amelie’s lips curved into a faint, almost self-aware smile as she looked back down at the paper.
—So I think that one’s going to remain my most frustrating dream,— she added lightly, though there was a trace of something real behind it.
Lando nudged her knee gently with his.
—You’ve done literally everything else,— he pointed out. —I think you can survive one.—
She huffed a soft laugh at that, nodding slightly.
—I know,— she said. —It’s just funny.—
Her eyes moved again, scanning the rest of the list, her expression softening further with every line, every small, handwritten dream that had once felt impossibly far away and now sat somewhere between memory and reality.
—“Carpool Karaoke with James Corden,”— she read quietly.
—That one’s still pending,— Emma said.
—“Wax figure at Madame Tussauds,”— Amelie continued.
Lando let out a small laugh.
—I did that one before you,— he said, a hint of teasing in his voice.
Amelie turned her head toward him instantly, narrowing her eyes.
—Don’t get used to it,— she shot back, though her smile gave her away.
He raised his hands slightly in surrender, amused.
—Just saying,— he shrugged.
Her gaze softened again as she looked back down at the page, her fingers tightening slightly around it, like she was holding onto something that felt bigger than just a list now.
—“Stadium tour that sells out in minutes…”— she murmured.
Emma didn’t say anything this time.
She didn’t need to.
They all knew.
The room had gone quieter again, not in a heavy way, just… full.
Amelie stared at the paper for a second longer, her vision blurring just slightly before she blinked, her breath catching in her chest as something finally shifted, finally broke through whatever quiet control she had been holding onto since the night before.
—This is so…— she started, her voice wavering just a little before she stopped, pressing her lips together as her shoulders lifted with a shaky inhale.
Emma’s expression softened immediately.
—Hey,— she said gently.
Amelie shook her head slightly, a small, breathy laugh slipping out even as her eyes filled, the tears she had been holding back finally spilling over, quiet but steady as she lowered the paper just slightly.
—I can’t believe we wrote this,— she whispered.
Lando didn’t hesitate.
His arm came around her shoulders instantly, pulling her gently into him, his hand resting against the back of her head as he pressed a soft kiss to her temple, grounding, steady, familiar.
—You did this,— he murmured quietly.
Amelie let out a small, shaky breath against him, her fingers still clutching the paper as she leaned into his chest, letting herself feel it this time, fully, without pushing it away.
Emma watched them for a second, her own expression soft, almost emotional in a quieter way, before she leaned back slightly, giving them space without breaking the moment.
Hannah stayed by the door, unusually silent now, her arms still crossed but her smile softer, proud.
Amelie’s shoulders shook lightly as she cried, not overwhelming, not out of control—just enough to release everything that had been building, everything that had been held back for too long.
The list crinkled slightly in her hand.
Sixteen-year-old dreams, written in uneven ink, carried forward into a life that had somehow met them, one by one.
And even the ones that hadn’t happened yet didn’t feel impossible anymore.
Not after this.
Not after everything.
--------------
liked by lando, emmachamberlain, and others
ameliedayman: pit stop on my way to Ameliewood for weekend 2🌹 @airbnb
View all 2,053 comments
lando: i was NOT gonna bite it btw → ameliedayman: sure → maxfewtrell: the evidence says otherwise
lando: that list pic is crazy → ameliedayman: i’m working → lando: you’ve done everything already 😭
elysiadayman: THE SHORTS??? 😭 → ameliedayman: iconic right → elysiadayman: insane actually
fanameliee: THE LIST???? SHE’S DONE ALMOST EVERYTHING 😭 → goldenhouramelie: legend → softamelie: icon
ameliecore: HEADLINING COACHELLA (DONE) IM SICK → cherryvibes: she really did that → dreamygirlie: history
papayagirl: LANDO IN THE FIRST PIC BYE 😭 → loveroflan: MENACE
elysiadayman: also the list made me emotional 🥹 → ameliedayman: stop
stelladayman: you ticking off dreams like it’s nothing → ameliedayman: it doesn’t feel like nothing → schecoperez: we’re proud
schecoperez: zócalo next 👀 → ameliedayman: SOON
lanfan44: him pretending to bite her shorts 😭 → papayaprincess: i can’t breathe → gridromance: boyfriend behavior
ameliecentral: the pit stop is actually insane branding → cherryvibes: she’s a genius → dreamygirlie: next level
f1girlie: from racetrack to this whole empire… wow
emmachamberlain: the pit stop is actually unreal → ameliedayman: come back → amberpark: i’m still thinking about the slushies
amberpark: BEST DAY EVER → ameliedayman: love you → emmachamberlain: chaotic but perfect
lilymhe: the veil shot??? → ameliedayman: my favorite → carmenmmundt: stunning
hannahmeloche: the wishlist pic made me cry → ameliedayman: don’t start → emmachamberlain: too late
alex_albon: that’s a long list ticked off → ameliedayman: still more to go
georgerussell63: save some achievements for the rest of us → lando: literally → ameliedayman: no ❤️
amelieupdates: BARRY MANILOW??? → goldenhouramelie: WHAT TIMELINE → softamelie: she’s THAT girl
fanpageamelie: the copacabana reference omg → cherryvibes: she’s crazy for that → dreamygirlie: iconic
lanmeliecentral: he’s literally in half the memories 😭 → loveroflan: as he should
maxverstappen1: good list → ameliedayman: thanks max
carmenmmundt: the red dress close up HELLO??? → ameliedayman: she’s special
gridwatcher: the stage mock-up??? → f1tea: insane vision → papayagirl: she planned EVERYTHING
ameliecore: i love how personal this dump feels → goldenhouramelie: not just glam → softamelie: real moments
papayagirl: yeah no he’s not leaving her side this whole weekend → loveroflan: never
fanameliee: the veil pic??? she’s insane → cherryvibes: cinematic → dreamygirlie: art
ameliecentral: she’s literally living her dream list in real time → goldenhouramelie: and sharing it with us 😭
lanfanclub: i just know he took half of these pics → papayaprincess: photographer bf → loveroflan: 100%
gridromance: this is more than a post this is a whole era → f1tea: ameliewood era → papayagirl: we’re living in it
--------------
The desert had started to cool in that slow, almost unnoticeable way it always did, the heat of the day slipping quietly into something softer as the sun dipped lower and painted everything in gold. The porch sat in that in-between light, half warm, half shadowed, the air finally gentle enough to breathe without thinking about it, and Amelie had settled into one of the chairs like she belonged there, one leg tucked under her, the other stretched out lazily as she threw Charlie’s ball across the yard with an easy flick of her wrist.
He chased it every time like it was the first.
Full speed, no hesitation, sand kicking up behind him as he ran, grabbed it, turned, and sprinted back toward her like the entire world depended on it. It made her laugh under her breath each time, softer now, calmer than the chaos of the last few days, her body finally catching up to everything that had happened.
For once, she wasn’t performing.
She wasn’t thinking about what came next.
She was just… there.
The ball landed back near her feet again, slightly damp from Charlie’s mouth, and she reached down to grab it, her fingers wrapping around it just as she heard footsteps behind her—unhurried, familiar enough that she didn’t tense, just turned her head slightly over her shoulder.
Lando.
He looked a little out of place and completely at home at the same time, a few loose papers in one hand, a couple of pens tucked between his fingers like he hadn’t fully figured out how to carry them properly. There was something casual about it, something almost boyish in the way he approached, like whatever he was about to say had been forming in his head for a while and he hadn’t quite decided how to present it yet.
Amelie raised an eyebrow slightly, a small smile already tugging at her lips.
—What’s that?— she asked, watching him as he got closer.
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he dropped the papers and pens onto the small table between them without ceremony, the stack sliding slightly as they hit the surface, before pulling out the chair across from her and sitting down, leaning forward just a bit, elbows resting on his knees as he looked at her with something thoughtful, something quieter than his usual teasing.
—Okay,— he started, exhaling lightly through his nose as if organizing his thoughts mid-sentence. —I have an idea.—
Amelie’s smile deepened immediately.
—That sounds dangerous,— she said lightly, tossing the ball again without looking, Charlie already sprinting after it.
Lando huffed a quiet laugh, shaking his head slightly.
—No, it’s not,— he insisted, though the hint of a smile on his face betrayed him. —It’s actually… kind of a good one.—
She tilted her head, studying him now, curiosity settling in.
—Go on,— she prompted.
He glanced briefly at the papers on the table, then back at her, something shifting in his expression, something a little more serious but not heavy, just… real.
—I was thinking,— he said slowly, —you just did Coachella. Like… one of your biggest dream.—
Her fingers stilled slightly where they rested on the arm of the chair, the words landing softer than they might have a day ago, but still carrying weight.
—And you’ve basically done everything on that list Emma brought,— he continued. —Most of it, at least.—
Amelie let out a small breath, a faint smile pulling at her lips.
—Most,— she echoed.
He nodded once, then shifted slightly in his seat.
—And I…— he paused briefly, glancing down for a second before continuing, —I did mine too. Or what I thought was mine.—
Her gaze softened immediately.
—Becoming world champion,— she said quietly.
He nodded again, a small, almost disbelieving smile flickering across his face like it still didn’t fully feel real even now.
—Yeah,— he murmured. —That one.—
There was a brief pause, not awkward, just… shared.
Then he leaned forward slightly, nudging the papers toward her with two fingers.
—So I thought… maybe we make new ones,— he said.
Amelie blinked.
—New ones?—
—Yeah,— he nodded, a little more certain now. —Like… new lists. New dreams. But not…— he gestured vaguely, searching for the right word, —not like that. Not big, insane, world-ending things.—
Her smile returned, softer this time.
—Then what?—
He shrugged slightly, the corner of his mouth lifting.
—Smaller ones,— he said. —Or… different ones. Things we actually want now. Not what we thought we wanted when we were sixteen.—
The idea settled between them.
Quiet.
Simple.
And somehow… bigger than it sounded.
Amelie looked down at the papers, then back at him, something in her chest loosening in a way she hadn’t expected, like the pressure of always chasing something had just shifted into something softer, something that didn’t need to prove anything.
—Okay,— she said finally, a small smile breaking through. —I like that.—
Lando’s expression mirrored hers, relief flickering briefly across his face before he reached for one of the pens and slid another toward her.
—Good,— he said. —Because I already committed by bringing supplies.—
She laughed softly, taking the pen from him, their fingers brushing for just a second before she pulled back, settling more comfortably into her chair as she placed the paper on the table in front of her.
For a moment, neither of them wrote.
They just sat there, the sound of Charlie running back and forth filling the quiet space, the sun dipping lower, the light turning warmer, softer.
Then, slowly, the pens started moving.
Amelie’s handwriting came easier than she expected, the words forming without too much overthinking, her mind shifting away from stages and awards and expectations into something more grounded, more… real.
Things like learn to cook properly without burning everything.
Have a Sunday routine.
Adopt another cat (even if Benny hates it).
Wake up somewhere and not have to leave the next day.
Her lips curved faintly as she wrote, something almost peaceful settling into her chest with every line.
Across from her, Lando wrote too, his brow furrowed slightly in concentration, occasionally glancing up at her before looking back down again, like he was making sure she was still there, still doing this with him.
Time passed without them noticing.
The sun dipped lower.
The air cooled further.
Charlie eventually slowed, collapsing somewhere on the floor with the ball between his paws, content and tired.
Amelie leaned back slightly in her chair, looking down at her paper, scanning the list she had just created, something soft and almost shy flickering in her expression.
—Can I see yours?— she asked suddenly, lifting her gaze toward him.
Lando didn’t even look up.
—No,— he said immediately.
She frowned slightly.
—Why not?—
—Because you’re going to judge me,— he replied, still writing.
—No, I’m not,— she insisted, leaning forward slightly. —I promise.—
He finally looked up, one eyebrow raised.
—That means you are,— he said.
Amelie huffed a small laugh, reaching across the table anyway.
—Lan,— she dragged out his name, already trying to grab the paper.
Her fingers closed around the edge of the page before he could pull it back, the paper crinkling slightly between them in a brief, quiet tug-of-war that had no real force behind it, more instinct than resistance, until he let go with a soft exhale that sounded suspiciously like surrender disguised as annoyance. Amelie didn’t waste a second, drawing the paper toward herself like it was something fragile she might lose if she hesitated, her eyes dropping immediately to the handwriting she knew so well, messier than hers, slightly slanted, letters pressed harder into the page like he had been thinking more than he had been writing.
She expected something light.
Teasing.
Something he would try to pass off as casual.
Her expression shifted almost instantly.
The first few lines made her smile without her even realizing, something warm and soft pulling at the corners of her mouth as her eyes moved slowly, taking it in properly instead of skimming.
Learn how to cook something properly without burning it.
Get a dog that actually listens (Charlie doesn’t count).
Have a house that feels like a home, not just somewhere to stay.
Travel without a schedule.
Spend Christmas in one place.
Her chest tightened, not painfully, just enough to make her breathe a little slower, like she had stumbled into something more intimate than she had expected. These weren’t the kind of dreams people talked about out loud, not in the way they talked about championships or headlines or trophies. These were quieter, softer things, the kind that settled into the spaces between everything else.
Her eyes kept moving.
Build something that lasts.
That one sat differently.
It lingered.
She swallowed lightly, her fingers tightening just slightly around the paper before her gaze dropped further down, slower now, more careful, like she knew something else was waiting for her there.
It didn’t take long to find it.
Her name wasn’t written loudly.
It wasn’t circled or underlined or made into something obvious.
It was just there.
Amelie.
Simple.
Placed between two other lines like it belonged there, like it had always been part of the list.
Her breath caught anyway.
The world around her softened in that quiet, almost imperceptible way where everything else faded just slightly, the sound of the desert, the faint rustle of the wind, even Charlie shifting somewhere nearby—all of it slipping into the background as her eyes stayed fixed on that one word.
She didn’t look up immediately.
Her thumb brushed lightly over the ink, like she needed to confirm it was real, like it might disappear if she didn’t.
—Lan…— her voice came out softer than she intended, almost careful, like she wasn’t sure how to hold it yet.
He didn’t interrupt.
He just watched her.
Slowly, she lifted her gaze, her eyes finding his across the table, something fragile and full sitting right there between them, unspoken but impossible to ignore.
—What is this?— she asked, though it didn’t sound like a question, more like she needed to hear him say it.
Lando didn’t look away.
There was no hesitation in him, no attempt to brush it off or make a joke out of it the way he might have in any other moment. His posture shifted just slightly, leaning back in his chair, but his eyes stayed on hers, steady, grounded in a way that made her chest tighten further.
—That’s…— he started, then exhaled lightly, like the words were simpler than he was making them. —That’s my biggest one.—
Her lips parted just slightly.
He held her gaze.
—You,— he said, quieter now, but certain. —You’re my biggest dream.—
It didn’t feel like a grand declaration.
It didn’t need to be.
The simplicity of it landed heavier than anything louder ever could have, settling into her chest in a way that made her eyes burn almost instantly, the tears rising before she could stop them, before she could even try.
Her smile came with it.
Soft.
A little shaky.
Her fingers tightened around the paper for a second before she set it down carefully on the table, like it deserved more care than just being held, like it needed to exist outside of her hands for a moment so she could breathe.
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t trust her voice to hold steady.
Instead, she leaned forward, slow but certain, her hand coming up to rest lightly against his jaw as she closed the space between them, her lips finding his in a kiss that wasn’t rushed or desperate, just… full. Full of everything she couldn’t put into words, everything that had been building quietly between them without needing to be named.
He met her there easily, one hand coming up to her waist, pulling her just slightly closer across the table, grounding her in the moment, in him.
It lingered.
Soft.
Certain.
Real.
When she pulled back, her forehead rested lightly against his for a second, her breath uneven but quieter now, her eyes still closed like she was holding onto the feeling just a little longer before letting it settle.
—You’re so…— she started, her voice breaking into a small, breathy laugh before she shook her head faintly. —I hate you a little.—
He huffed a quiet laugh against her.
—You don’t,— he murmured.
Her smile deepened.
—No,— she admitted softly. —I don’t.—
The moment could have stayed there.
It almost did.
But Lando shifted suddenly, quick enough to catch her off guard, his hand darting across the table toward her paper before she could react, pulling it away with a small, triumphant movement that made her eyes widen instantly.
—Hey!— she protested, reaching for it, but he leaned back just enough to keep it out of her reach, already scanning the page.
—Fair trade,— he said simply.
—That’s not fair,— she shot back, though there was no real heat in it, only a hint of nervousness creeping in now.
His eyes moved quickly at first, then slower.
His expression changed.
The same way hers had.
Small things.
Learn to cook properly without burning everything.
Have a Sunday routine.
Stay in one place long enough to decorate it.
Movie nights that turn into falling asleep on the couch.
Wake up next to someone and not have to leave.
His grip on the paper tightened just slightly.
He hadn’t expected that.
Not really.
His gaze flicked up to her for half a second before dropping back down, continuing, more carefully now, like he was reading something he wasn’t supposed to see but couldn’t look away from.
Adopt another cat.
Have people over just because.
Build something that feels like a life, not just moments.
That one made his chest pull.
Then at the very bottom, smaller, almost hidden.
Like she hadn’t been sure whether to include it or not.
His lips twitched before he could stop them.
—You’re joking,— he said under his breath.
Amelie froze.
—What?— she asked, though she already knew.
He tilted the paper slightly, pointing at the last line with the pen.
—“One Less Lonely Girl,”— he read aloud, the corner of his mouth lifting.
Her face flushed instantly, her hands coming up to cover part of it as she let out a small, embarrassed laugh.
—I wrote it small for a reason,— she mumbled.
He looked up at her fully now, amusement still there but softened by something else, something quieter, more thoughtful.
—You’re still holding onto that?— he asked.
She dropped her hands slowly, her smile softer now, a little more vulnerable.
—What can I say,— she shrugged lightly. —A girl never forgets her first love.—
The words were light.
Playful.
But they landed somewhere deeper anyway.
Lando didn’t respond right away.
His gaze stayed on her for a second longer, something shifting behind his eyes, something she didn’t quite catch but felt.
A thought forming.
A decision settling into place.
The paper lowered slowly in his hand, his attention still on her, his expression unreadable for just a moment before it softened again, the hint of a smile returning like nothing had happened.
—Right,— he murmured.
Amelie tilted her head slightly, studying him.
—What?—
He shook his head lightly, folding the paper once before setting it back down on the table between them.
—Nothing,— he said, too casually.
But the look in his eyes lingered, and somewhere, quietly, without her noticing he had already decided.
He was going to find a way to give her that one too.
System Failure - Chapter 73: Monaco - Part 2
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Dr. Anastasia "Ana" Wolff (Original Character)
Summary:
Max Verstappen to Mercedes? The paddock is buzzing. The media’s in meltdown.
Dr. Anastasia “Ana” Wolff, Mercedes’ notoriously brilliant, emotionally unavailable lead systems engineer and Toto Wolff’s eldest daughter, is not handling it well. Because Max isn’t just a potential signing, he’s the man she’s been sleeping with in secret for nearly a decade.
And if the rumours are true, and Max Verstappen really is joining Mercedes, then Ana’s carefully compartmentalised world is about to explode.
Warnings and Notes: This chapter contains major character injury, graphic portrayal of injuries and graphic portrayal of a crash in Formula 1. FINANCIAL CRIMES! Some Journalists just suck!
Let me know if I missed something else, and I'll add it!
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 4 October 2025
Daniel Ricciardo had been to plenty of strange places in Formula One.
Motorhomes that looked like minimalist cult compounds. Hospitality units built to convince billionaires they were still in touch with sport (even though they absolutely were not).
Apartments drivers swore were “very normal” despite containing twelve watches, three dozen helmets, no food, and at least one suspiciously expensive sim rig.
But this… This was different.
Not because the house in Monaco wasn’t beautiful. It was. Quietly, offensively beautiful, in the way money and good taste occasionally conspired to make a person feel underdressed just by walking in.
No, what made it strange was that it was Max’s.
Not the old kind of Max place. Not the kind of apartment Daniel could once have pictured him in when they were both younger and louder and measuring life by race weekends and badly advised dinners and whatever private nonsense passed for adulthood in the paddock.
This house had… roots.
Light. Space. Real furniture. Books. The kind of details that suggested someone actually lived here rather than just sleeping between flights.
And then there was the fact that the first thing Daniel saw when the door opened was Max in a wheelchair.
That part hit harder than he’d expected.
Not because Daniel had forgotten.
He hadn’t.
Nobody in the paddock had forgotten Baku. Nobody with a functioning brain could have.
But knowing something and seeing it were two entirely different species of pain.
Daniel stopped for half a second in the doorway.
Max lifted an eyebrow. “What.”
There it was.
Still him.
Still that exact tone.
Daniel exhaled, something in his chest loosening and tightening at the same time. “Mate,” he said.
Max looked him over. “You’re dramatic.”
“That’s not ‘good to see you,’ by the way.”
“You’re here, aren’t you.”
Daniel laughed once, because of course that was as close as he was getting.
Took in the cast properly now. The way Max held his body around pain even while pretending not to. The cup on the side table. The medication schedule visible in the most un-Max detail imaginable. The deeply suspicious sense that the whole house had reorganized itself around injury with military precision.
Of course it had.
Ana.
“Can I hug you,” Daniel asked, then added immediately, “or are you too broken.”
Max snorted softly. “That’s a terrible way to ask.”
“Answer the question.”
Max lifted his good arm a little. “I am fine.”
Daniel leaned in carefully, one hand bracing on the back of the chair, one arm around Max’s shoulders. Brief. Tight. Enough.
Daniel felt the reality of him all at once—solid, warm, alive, a little thinner than he should have been, but undeniably here.
When he pulled back, Max was looking at him with that same old expression that always seemed to contain two contradictory things at once: don’t make this weird and I know exactly why this matters.
“You look horrible,” Daniel said.
Max snorted. “You flew here to say that?”
“I flew here to say many things. That’s just the first.” Daniel straightened, finally taking in the rest of the room properly.
That was when he saw the lion.
It was sitting on the armchair opposite the sofa, absurdly plush and faintly regal.
Daniel stared.
Then looked at Max. Then back at the lion.
“What the hell is that?”
Max followed his gaze. “Oh.”
“‘Oh’?” Daniel said. “That is not an ‘oh.’ That’s a whole creature.”
“It’s a lion.”
“Yes, thank you, David Attenborough.”
Max looked mildly offended. “It was a gift.”
Daniel walked closer to inspect it.
The lion was very soft-looking. Deep gold. Ridiculous mane. The sort of stuffed animal that would have been instantly mocked in any other setting and yet, somehow, here in this room, next to the wheelchair and the cast and the silence after Baku, felt weirdly sacred.
He looked back at Max.
“Jack gave Ana a wolf.”
Daniel blinked. “Okay.”
“And apparently I needed a lion.”
There was a beat.
Then Daniel, because he was only human, started laughing. Actually laughing. “Mate.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“You have matching emotional support predators?”
“It’s not matching!”
“It is absolutely matching.”
Max crossed his arms. “He doesn’t even have a name.”
That only made Daniel laugh harder. “You didn’t name your lion?”
“No.”
“That is somehow worse.”
Max glared at him. “You’re being very unhelpful.”
Daniel wiped a hand over his face, still grinning despite himself. “So Ana has a wolf.”
“Yes.”
“And you have an unnamed lion.”
“Yes.”
“And this is normal now.”
Max considered that. “Mostly.”
Daniel looked once more at the lion.
“Well,” he said. “That’s deeply weird.”
Daniel shook his head and came back toward the sofa, lowering himself into the chair opposite Max.
“I leave you alone for five minutes and suddenly you’re in a beautiful house with a wheelchair and an unnamed lion.”
Max leaned back. “That’s a very weird summary of my life.”
Daniel let the quiet sit for a second.
The real quiet.
The one under the jokes.
Because seeing Max like this—really seeing him, the cast, the chair, the residual tension in the way he carried his body now—did something ugly to the inside of Daniel’s ribs.
Not pity.
Never that.
But grief, maybe, for how close it had all come.
Daniel put the bag he’d brought on the coffee table.
“I brought snacks.”
Max eyed it. “I told you not to.”
“Yes, but your opinions are suggestions anyway.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“It is in my heart.”
Max shook his head once and wheeled himself around to the other side of the coffee table with the kind of irritated efficiency that made it obvious he hated needing help and had therefore become very good at doing things one-handed and seated.
Daniel watched him for a second. Not staring this time. Just… watching.
Max noticed, because of course he did. “Don’t.”
Daniel lifted his hands. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking things.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “How rude of me.”
That got the smallest snort out of Max.
Better.
They settled into the awkward-not-awkward rhythm of people who had known each other too long to pretend this was a normal catch-up and too much pride to make it sentimental at first.
Daniel opened the snack bag.
Max looked inside and immediately said, “You actually brought juice boxes.”
“Yes.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Counterpoint: they’re fun.”
Max did not dignify that with a response.
Daniel handed him one anyway.
Then Daniel, because he had not come all the way to Monaco to only discuss stuffed animals and childish beverages, looked at Max and said:
“So.”
Max sighed. “Yeah.”
Daniel leaned one elbow on his knee. “How much do you want to talk about Red Bull?”
Max looked down at the juice box in his hand. “Depends.”
“On?”
“How stupid you’re planning to be.”
Daniel considered that. “Moderately.”
“That’s too much.”
“Fair.”
He softened slightly. “Okay. Less stupid version.”
Max nodded once.
Daniel looked toward the window, then back. “What the hell happened over there?”
It was not a small question.
It wasn’t really answerable in one line.
It wasn’t something Daniel thought Max actually had a full explanation for.
Max knew that too. He shifted slightly in the chair, expression flattening into something older and sharper. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
Daniel waited.
Max stared past him for a second, like the answer might be somewhere in the wall. “It started going bad before Baku,” he said.
Daniel did know that. The politics. The rot. The weird, poisonous shift in the air every time Max’s name and 2026 ended up in the same sentence.
“The team was…” Max exhaled. “Different.”
“Bad different?”
“Yes.”
“And after you signed?”
A humorless twitch of the mouth. “Worse.”
Daniel let that sit.
He remembered Red Bull too. Not this exact version, maybe. Not the current ugliness. But the way that place could turn if too many people started confusing their own power with the team’s survival.
“They blamed you,” Daniel said, quieter now.
Max’s jaw moved once. “Yeah.”
Daniel looked down. Then back up. “That must’ve been—”
“Don’t.”
“Max.”
He looked at him then. Really looked. And Daniel saw it—under the usual control, under the sarcasm, under the refusal to dramatize his own pain—the raw, unresolved shape of something Max still had nowhere useful to put.
“They said driver error,” Max said flatly. “Before they knew anything.”
Daniel nodded once. Very carefully. “Yeah.”
“And then they kept talking like I was already gone.”
Hearing Max say it out loud made it even worse
Daniel thought of the years.
The wins. The loyalty. What Max had dragged out of that team, over and over and over.
Daniel looked away for a second because he needed the room to stop looking like it might split open under the weight of that. Then, because he knew Max would hate sympathy and because he still wanted to give him something true, he said, “That was bullshit.”
Max huffed softly. “Yeah.”
Silence again.
Max rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I don’t even know what to feel about it either.”
Daniel sat very still.
He hadn’t come here expecting clean emotion. But hearing Max say it like that—flat, tired, almost bewildered by the size and shape of what had been done to him—made something ugly twist in Daniel’s gut.
“You don’t have to know yet,” he said.
Max laughed once. Dry. Empty. “Convenient.”
“I mean it.”
Max looked at him again. There was nothing but exhaustion in his expression.
Just exhaustion. Confusion. The kind of displacement that came when betrayal was so total your brain still hadn’t figured out where to put it.
“It doesn’t fit anywhere,” Max said quietly. “That’s the problem.”
Daniel leaned back slightly, choosing his next words with more care than either of them usually had patience for. “Then don’t make it fit yet.”
Max’s eyes narrowed just slightly.
Daniel lifted one shoulder. “Feel weird about it. Feel nothing. Feel ten contradictory things and hate all of them. That’s still better than trying to package it into something tidy because other people are more comfortable when you do.”
Max looked down at his hands. At the cast. At the wheel of the chair. Then he nodded.
A sound came from the hallway then—quick footsteps, then a smaller voice asking something about peaches, followed by a woman answering in a calm, low tone.
Daniel looked toward the doorway. Then back at Max.
“So,” he said, because returning to absurdity was often its own kind of mercy, “you’re really doing this.”
Max frowned. “Doing what.”
“This.”
Daniel gestured around the room.
“The house. The lion. The terrifying girlfriend. The child who apparently babysit now. The emotional complexity. Very domestic. Deeply suspicious.”
Max actually smiled at that. “Shut up.”
“No,” Daniel said. “I’m trying to process.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I absolutely do.”
He pointed toward the hall. “Also I need a warning. Is she going to judge me?”
Max thought about it for perhaps one second too long. “Yes.”
“Great.”
“She’ll probably be polite about it.”
“That’s worse.”
“Yeah.”
Daniel exhaled and looked at Max in the chair, alive and tired and irritatingly himself.
It still hurt, seeing him like this. But hurt was survivable. Absence would have been worse.
Much worse.
The thought hit him again, brief and brutal, and before he could stop himself he said, quieter than he meant to, “I’m really glad you’re here.”
Max looked up. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”
“We got peaches!”
Max rolled his eyes without any real irritation in it. “Yeah, that’ll be them.”
A second later Ana Wolff appeared in the doorway with a market bag over one shoulder and the kind of composed presence that made Daniel understand, immediately and in full, why half the paddock seemed to regard her as a kind of elegant threat.
She stopped when she saw him. Assessing. Then she nodded once. “Daniel.”
“Ana.”
He stood, because he had been raised correctly and because not standing up when faced with Susie Wolff’s daughter felt like the sort of thing that might be remembered against him later.
Jack Wolff popped out from behind her with a paper bag in one hand. “You’re Daniel.”
Daniel blinked. “I am.”
“You had number three.”
There was a tiny silence. Then Daniel looked at Max very slowly.
Max looked back at him and said, “We’ll get there.”
Ana, meanwhile, set the bag down as though children introducing your old racing number within three seconds of meeting you was just one of many realities she no longer bothered to question.
Daniel smiled at Jack. “Yeah, mate. I did.”
Jack nodded gravely, then looked at Max. “I told him.”
“Clearly.”
“Can I have a peach now?”
“Yes,” Ana said drily, handing him the bag. Jack vanished again, mission resumed.
Daniel watched him go, then looked back at Max.
“Right,” he said. “Now we’re definitely getting there.”
Ana, who was still close enough to hear that, looked between them both.
“I’m making tea,” she said. “Try not to ruin anything meaningful while I’m gone.”
Daniel watched her disappear into the kitchen and then turned slowly back to Max.
“…Mate.”
Max rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Don’t.”
“No, I just—”
“Don’t.”
“That’s serious.”
“Yes.”
Daniel sat down again. His eyes flicked toward the lion once more.
Then back to Max.
“3?”
Max leaned back slightly in the chair. “Yeah.”
Daniel waited.
Max looked down at his hands. Then up again. “Victoria had merch made for next season. Some of it had a 33 on it.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
He understood at once. The old number. The old years. The old team.
“Right,” Daniel said quietly.
“And then I realized…” Max shrugged one shoulder. “You retired.”
Daniel smiled faintly. “News travels fast.”
“And the two-season reserve isn’t done yet.”
“No.”
“But if you agreed…”
Daniel stared at him for a second. Then sat back.
Well. There it was.
Not just sentiment. Not just nostalgia. Trust. Respect. The asking mattered.
He thought of the number 3. Of all the years it had lived on his back. On his car. Of Red Bull. Of all the versions of himself that had carried it. Of how arbitrary numbers were until suddenly they weren’t.
Then he looked at Max.
At the cast. At the chair. At the stubborn, tired, very alive friend in front of him.
And the answer came easily.
“It’s yours if you want it,” Daniel said.
Max looked up.
Just like that. No buildup. No sentimental little speech.
Daniel had no interest in making him ask for it. That wasn’t their style.
“You don’t need to do that.”
Daniel huffed. “Mate. I’m retired. I’m not making a comeback.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“If you want 3, you take 3.”
Max was quiet for a second. Then, more carefully than usual, “You’re sure?”
Daniel let out a short laugh. “Yes, I’m sure. What am I going to do, put it in a museum?”
Max’s mouth twitched, but only slightly.
Daniel leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “You wanted it first,” he said. “You picked 33 because I had it. Fine. Great. Very logical, very seventeen-year-old Max. But if it matters to you now, then take 3.”
Max looked down again. “It’s weird,” he said.
“Of course it’s weird.”
“It feels…”
Daniel waited.
Max shrugged one shoulder.
“A lot.”
That tracked.
33 was old Red Bull. Old fights. Old radios. Old ambitions. The boy version of Max and the first dangerous version of the man. Before the titles. Before the 1. Before everything calcified into expectation and pressure and then finally rupture.
And 3…
3 was even older somehow. Simpler. Luck. Shape. The thing he’d wanted before compromise made a mythology out of something adjacent.
Daniel looked at him and said the only thing that really mattered. “If you take it, just win with it.”
That got Max’s eyes back up.
Daniel smiled slightly. “Otherwise it’s embarrassing for both of us.”
A real laugh, that time.
Short, but real. “You sure?”
Daniel snorted. “Please. If anyone’s going to drag that number around for a few more wins, I’d rather it be you than some random kid with a mullet and a branding deal.”
That got the laugh he wanted. Short. Real. A little rough.
“Fair.”
Daniel smiled.
Then, because he knew the moment had been earned and because he was still himself, added, “Just don’t make the font ugly.”
Max shook his head once. “I’ll make sure it gets a few more wins.”
Daniel nodded once.
“Good.”
The promise sat there between them, simple and weighty and understood for exactly what it was.
A handoff. Cleanly given. Cleanly received.
Then, after a minute, because some things should not remain too dark for too long in a living room with juice boxes on the table, he said: “So. The lion.”
Max closed his eyes. “No.”
“What if you name him Daniel Junior?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Good, you’re healing.”
And that, finally, made Max laugh hard enough to have to stop and brace a hand against the sofa.
Daniel grinned.
There he is, he thought again. Still here. Still difficult. Still Max.
***
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 4 October 2025
Ana liked Daniel Ricciardo almost immediately, which was irritating on principle.
She had intended—quietly, privately, and with what she considered perfectly reasonable self-protective instincts—to reserve judgment.
Not because she distrusted him, but because she distrusted charisma.
Too many people in Formula One used it like a solvent.
Loudness as camouflage. Ease as strategy. A grin broad enough to make everyone mistake entertainment for kindness
Daniel Ricciardo, unfortunately, seemed to be one of the rare cases where the charm was attached to an actually nice person.
Which was deeply inconvenient.
She stood in the kitchen with a tea towel in one hand, watching him from the slight remove she always gave herself when new people entered a room she considered hers. Not hiding. Not exactly. Just calibrating.
He was sitting opposite Max now, long legs stretched out, talking with the kind of warmth that didn’t demand the room rearrange itself around him. He had already made Jack laugh twice, which Ana noted. He had also looked at Max in the wheelchair only once in that first sharp, painful way people did before their manners caught up—and then corrected himself immediately.
That, too, she noted.
He wasn’t trying to be delicate. He was trying to be kind without making it humiliating.
Important difference.
Jack had vanished toward the garden with a peach, Coco and Max’s stuffed lion—who, Ana was beginning to suspect, was still unnamed because Max was emotionally stunted in ways no amount of race wins had yet repaired— in tow.
Ana carried the mugs through to the sitting room.
Daniel stood the second she entered, which was either good upbringing or fear. Possibly both.
She set one mug down in front of him. “Tea.”
He looked at it like she’d handed him a peace treaty. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then she sat on the edge of the sofa near Max, one leg folded beneath her.
The ring was still at her throat on its chain, warm against her skin.
That, too, Daniel noticed.
His eyes flicked once to the chain.
Then back to her face.
Then, with a grin that was somehow both mischievous and entirely unthreatening, he said: “So. Congratulations, by the way.”
Ana blinked.
Max, made a low sound of warning that came several seconds too late to be useful.
Daniel lifted one shoulder. “I’m assuming we’re not pretending I didn’t notice the ring on the necklace.”
Ana went still. Not frozen.
Just… very, very aware.
Because she had met Daniel before, in the broad paddock sense of “we have both existed in adjacent physical space and acknowledged each other in passing.”
But this was different. This was personal. This was being looked at as herself and not as Toto Wolff’s daughter or an engineering asset or a ghost passing through a garage.
And apparently he had walked into the house and immediately identified the engagement.
Of course he had.
She looked at Max.
Max looked at the ceiling. Suspicious.
“Thank you,” she said, because unlike Max, she had manners.
Daniel smiled. “No worries.”
Then, because the universe had apparently decided she had not suffered enough public exposure this week, he added: “Bit late, really. I’ve only had years to get used to the concept.”
Ana turned her head slowly. “What.”
There was a beat of silence.
Max sat up straighter, which with him was the physical equivalent of a warning light.
Daniel, who had apparently never once in his life mistaken danger for a reason to retreat, looked between them and realized too late that he had stepped on something active. “…ah.”
Ana set her mug down with extraordinary care. “Years.”
Daniel glanced at Max.
Max rubbed a hand over his mouth.
Ana looked at him now. Not furious yet.
But very close to it.
“Max.”
Max sighed.
Daniel, like a man deciding that if he was going to die he might as well do it honestly, said, “In his defense, he didn’t tell everybody.”
Ana looked at him. Then back at Max. Then back at Daniel.
“Not everybody,” she repeated.
Daniel nodded. “Just me. GP. Victoria, I think.”
Ana turned to Max with the slow, dawning horror of someone watching classified information dissolve in real time. “You told everybody.”
Max sat there with all the dignity of a man who knew very well he had no defense and was still trying to find one. “I did not tell everybody.”
Ana stared at him.
He amended, reluctantly: “I told some people.”
“Some people,” she repeated.
Daniel made a small, abortive movement with his hand like perhaps he could physically intervene in the conversation and then wisely thought better of it.
Max looked at her and said, with the ill-advised honesty of a man who had apparently learned nothing: “We were friends with benefits for 9 years. That’s a long time to not tell anyone.”
Ana blinked at him. Once. Twice.
Ana sat back a fraction as if distance might somehow improve the situation.
“I told one person,” she said.
Daniel, foolishly curious, asked, “Who.”
“My best friend.”
He nodded at once. “That was sensible.”
Ana turned slowly toward him.
“And you are all just… talking about this.”
Daniel held up both hands. “Not discussing details, to be fair.”
“That is not the reassuring distinction you think it is.”
Max made the mistake of looking amused.
Ana turned back to him. “You told GP.”
“He already knew something was going on!”
“That is not the point.”
“He had eyes!”
“That is also not the point.”
Daniel, now visibly trying and failing not to laugh, looked down into his tea like it might provide a safer reality.
Ana folded her arms. “You told your sister.”
“Yes.”
“That one is almost understandable.”
“Thank you.”
“You told Daniel.”
Daniel nodded slightly. “Delighted to be here, by the way.”
Ana looked at him.
Then, against her better judgment, the corner of her mouth twitched.
Just once. Because there was no malice in any of it.
No betrayal, really.
Just Max—young and messy and apparently incapable of keeping all his feelings sealed off if they lasted longer than a race stint.
That should not have been endearing. It was, a little. Which was infuriating.
“I assumed,” Ana said carefully, “that if anyone knew, it would have been because I had informed them.”
Daniel gave her an expression of such open sympathy that she almost laughed again.
“Oh no,” he said. “That was never how this was going to go.”
Max snorted.
Ana looked at him. “You find this funny.”
“A little.”
“You are impossible.”
“Yes.”
Daniel sipped his tea and, to his credit, managed to look only moderately intimidated by her.
Ana noticed that too.
The way he watched her when she spoke. Not warily, exactly. More like someone standing in front of a machine they had heard stories about and were trying to understand how much of the legend was true.
That was familiar.
Too familiar.
And it always gave her the same stupid instinct: Try to seem normal.
An impossible brief, really.
Particularly now, with the week she’d had, and the ring on a chain, and Daniel Ricciardo in her sitting room and discovering in real time that Max had apparently been blabbing about their arrangement for years while she had told exactly one trusted friend and then carried the rest of it alone.
Ana picked up her tea again mostly to occupy her hands.
Daniel looked at her and said, carefully, “For what it’s worth, I did keep it quiet.”
She tilted her head. “That sounds like the minimum expected from someone entrusted with secret information.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But I’d still like credit.”
Max barked out a laugh.
Ana stared at Daniel for a second longer.
Then said, “Fine. One point.”
Daniel grinned. “Thank you.”
There it was again.
The thing she understood now, seeing him in the flesh and in Max’s orbit properly for the first time: why he had been Max’s favourite teammate.
He was generous.
Not simple—Daniel Ricciardo did not strike her as simple in any meaningful cognitive sense—but emotionally generous in a way that Ana would never be able to be.
He created space around people instead of taking it from them. Even now, sitting in her house with enough information to be dangerous and enough charm to be exhausting, he wasn’t trying to dominate the room.
He was just… in it.
Warmly.
Jack came flying back in at that exact moment, lion under one arm, peach half-finished in the other.
“Did you tell him about three?”
Max exhaled. “We did get there.”
Jack climbed onto the sofa beside Ana and immediately leaned against her shoulder like gravity had made an administrative decision.
Ana looked at Daniel. “You agreed?”
Daniel looked faintly offended. “Of course.”
“That quickly.”
“Yes.”
Max huffed. “He was weirdly normal about it.”
Daniel shrugged. “You want 3, you take 3.”
Jack, who had absolutely no idea this was the sort of thing adults might have layered feelings about, nodded solemnly and said, “Double luck was smart though.”
Daniel blinked. “Max told you that?”
Jack looked scandalized. “Of course.”
Ana leaned back slightly, letting Jack settle more comfortably against her while she watched the two men on the other side of the room—one still half in pain and pretending not to be, the other somehow managing to be deeply unserious and genuinely kind at the same time.
Daniel looked at Max. “I mean it, by the way. If you want it, it’s yours.”
Max held his gaze for a second.
Then nodded once. “I know.”
And because there was absolutely nothing else to do with any of this—not the years of secrecy, not the absurdity of properly meeting Daniel Ricciardo in her own home only to discover he had been aware of the intimate structure of her relationship for far longer than she found acceptable, not the deeply unhelpful fact that she liked him almost immediately—Ana looked at Max and said, with all the dignity she could still summon:
“We are revisiting your information security protocols later.”
Max smiled, slow and unapologetic. “Okay.”
He did not sound remotely sorry.
Daniel, still grinning, raised his mug slightly in her direction.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “you’re taking this very well.”
Ana considered that.
Then, because honesty had already become too normal in this room: “I am trying extremely hard to seem normal.”
That got both men at once.
Max’s face changed first—softened, in that private way it only ever did for her when she said like that.
Daniel’s expression followed half a second later with something like startled understanding.
And then Daniel, very gently now, said, “You don’t really need to.”
Ana exhaled. Just once. Then, because she still had standards, said, “That remains under review.”
***
Maison Étoiles, Monaco - 4 October 2025
Max found the shirt first.
There was that old Lewis Hamilton shirt, laying on the end of the bed. The printing washed out, the fabric whisper soft from hundreds of washes.
When Ana came back into the bedroom, she was wearing the new shirt and a pair of soft sleep shorts, her hair damp and loose down her back, face scrubbed clean of the day.
For a second Max just looked at her.
Because she looked… comfortable.
Actually comfortable. Not merely tolerant of clothing. Not subtly braced inside it.
The shirt sat clean across her shoulders, soft and unremarkable and correct, and the fact that something so simple could still feel like a victory in his chest annoyed him deeply.
She caught him looking.
“What.”
“You like it.”
Ana glanced down at herself, then back at him. “Yes.”
“That’s very emotional for you.”
“It is a shirt, Max.”
“It’s not just a shirt.”
Her mouth twitched. “No, apparently it is also a campaign against early-2010s Hamilton merchandise.”
He smiled.
Then, because his brain was apparently still circling the afternoon and had decided now was the time to become sincere, he said, “Daniel likes you.”
That got her attention.
Not all of it—Ana was still braiding back one side of her hair before she got into bed, still moving through her usual nighttime traditions—but enough.
“That sounds like a statement designed to provoke.”
“It’s true.”
She paused.
Then: “I like him too.”
Max leaned back against the headboard, pleased in a quiet way he had no interest in disguising.
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” A beat. “Which is irritating.”
He laughed softly. “There she is.”
Ana slid into bed beside him with the kind of careful movement that had become second nature around his healing body, just… adjusting without asking.
She reached automatically for the ring chain around her neck, then hesitated, fingers resting there briefly before taking it off and slipping the ring back on her finger.
Max noticed that too.
Of course he did.
The room had gone soft around them now. Lamps low. The windows cracked enough to let the night air in. The day, finally, narrowing down to just the two of them.
After a moment, Ana said, “You told him.”
Max winced a little. “Yeah.”
She turned her head to look at him.
Then, because precision mattered to her even in the privacy of their bed, she amended: “You told all of them.”
“Nastya—”
“No, I’m genuinely asking. At what point did it become a group project?”
He huffed out a laugh. “It wasn’t like that.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“It wasn’t,” he said again. “It was just… long.”
That made something in her face shift. Something closer to bewildered tenderness she would have denied under oath.
“We were …only having sex for nine years,” he said. “That’s a ridiculous amount of time to not tell anyone.”
“I managed it.”
“You told Xia.”
“That was one person.”
“Yeah. Exactly. One person.”
She folded her hands loosely over her stomach and stared up at the ceiling for a second. “I thought that was the point.”
“What.”
“Not telling people.”
Max turned his head toward her. “It was. At first.”
“And then?”
He let the answer sit for a second, because it was embarrassingly simple and therefore difficult to say without sounding like an idiot.
“And then it stopped being a thing I was hiding,” he said quietly. “And started being a thing that was mine.”
Ana didn’t look at him immediately. When she finally did, her expression had gone careful in that way it did when he’d managed to say something true enough to matter. “You make that sound…” she began, then stopped.
“What.”
She exhaled.
“Better than it felt in my head.”
Max smiled faintly, though there was no real amusement in it.
“That’s because in your head everything had to survive ten rounds of risk assessment before it was allowed to become real.”
Ana let that stand, which was as close to agreement as he was likely to get.
He looked at her for a moment longer.
Then, because the memory of her sitting on the sofa this afternoon with Daniel and tea and that very particular kind of horrified dignity was still too good not to revisit, he said, “You were so offended.”
“I was not offended.”
“You were absolutely offended.”
“I was making a reasonable point about information security.”
He laughed properly at that.
“You said ‘you told everybody’ like I’d leaked state secrets.”
“You had.”
“No, I hadn’t.”
“Max.”
He lifted a hand. “Fine. Some state secrets.”
She made a quiet sound of disapproval, but he could feel the laughter under it now, or something close enough to count.
Max reached for the glass on the bedside table, took a sip, then set it back down.
“You know what the problem was?”
Ana looked at him. “What.”
“You.”
That made her blink. “Excuse me.”
He smiled tiredly. “No, listen.”
She folded her arms. “I dislike that opening.”
“Yeah, well.” He shifted slightly against the pillows, one hand resting over the blanket on his bad leg more from habit than need. “You ran so hot and cold with me for years,” he said. “I genuinely didn’t think you were ever going to let this happen.”
Her face changed. Just enough to say the words had gone in somewhere she couldn’t easily redirect them out of.
Max looked at her.
Really looked.
At the line of her mouth. The quietness in her body that was never empty, just full of things she held very, very tightly.
“I mean it,” he said. “One week you’d be there all the time. You’d stay over. You’d call. You’d let me in just enough that I thought—okay, maybe. And then the next week you’d act like the whole thing had been a mistake.”
Ana looked away first.
Toward the window, toward the dark glass and the reflection of the room in it.
“I thought you were going to stop answering my messages one day and that would just be it.”
That made her turn back immediately. “I never would have done that.”
“No,” he said. “Probably not.” A beat. “But I didn’t know that.”
Silence.
He could feel her thinking beside him. Not just listening—thinking, sorting, turning each word over to test where it fit against her memory of the same years.
“I was happy anyway,” he admitted, quieter now. “That sounds pathetic, but I was. Even when it was half of something. Or not enough. Or weird. I still…” He stopped, then laughed softly at himself. “I still wanted you. I always wanted you.”
Ana’s expression had gone very still.
“And I was so stupidly happy,” he said, “when you finally gave in.”
She stared at him for a long second. Then said, very quietly, “I was scared.”
He let out a slow breath.
Yeah. Of course.
“I know.”
She smiled, but only with one corner of her mouth and not because anything was funny. “I was scared of wanting it more than I could survive,” she said. “I was scared that if I let it become real, I would lose the version of it I could still control.”
Her eyes dropped to her hands now, folded together on top of the blanket.
“I was scared that if I let myself say yes properly, then the next thing I would have to do would be trust that it could stay. And I didn’t…” She paused. “I didn’t know how to do that.”
Max looked at her and felt, not for the first time, the sharp, helpless ache of loving someone who had had to learn every soft thing as if it were dangerous.
“You didn’t trust me?”
She looked up at that immediately. “No,” she said. “That wasn’t it. I trusted you too much. Nearly immediately.”
That hit him harder than almost anything else she could have said.
Max went very still.
Ana’s voice stayed quiet. “That was the problem.”
She turned fully toward him now.
“I knew what you were to me long before I was willing to admit it. That first night…something just…clicked. It never felt like I had to perform with you. And that was dangerous. Because I knew that if I let myself do this properly, it would matter in a way I couldn’t perform my way out of.” She made a small, humorless sound. “I’m very good at being competent. I’m very good at managing structure. I’m terrible at standing in front of something I desperately want and not assuming it’s eventually going to become leverage for somebody else. Or that it’s not going to be taken from me again. ”
Max reached for her without thinking.
His hand finding hers over the blanket.
She let him take it at once.
“I wasn’t scared of you leaving because you were careless,” she said. “I was scared because if you left at all, it would have destroyed me.”
There was no good answer to that.
No joke. No smoothing line. Just the truth of it, sitting there between them in the dark.
Max looked at her hand in his. Then up at her again.
“I wouldn’t have,” he said.
She smiled faintly. Tiredly.
“I know that now.”
Now.
Not then.
He leaned a little closer.
“Why did you finally say yes?”
Ana looked at him. Then, after a second: “Because I got tired of making myself miserable on principle.”
That made him laugh.
Actually laugh. She looked mildly offended.
“It’s true.”
“I know,” he said.
“And because,” she added, quieter now, “there was a point after which saying no stopped being caution and just became cruelty.”
Max stilled again.
Ana looked at him.
“I had already built too much of my life around you,” she said. “I just hadn’t admitted that’s what I was doing.”
He squeezed her hand once.
There it was.
All of it.
The years. The circling. The almosts. The secrecy. The mess. The deep, strange relief of finally naming something that had existed in every meaningful way long before either of them had been brave enough to call it a relationship.
Max smiled, softer now.
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad you gave in.”
That got her. Just slightly.
The tiny helpless twitch at the corner of her mouth that always felt like winning something sacred.
“You’re impossible.”
“Yes.”
“And intolerably pleased with yourself.”
“Yes.”
“I was being vulnerable.”
“And I loved it.”
She rolled her eyes, but there was no heat in it now.
He reached up and touched the the ring on her finger, the sapphire warm underneath it.
“You know,” he said, “I told Daniel because I didn’t think you were ever going to actually let me keep you.”
Ana’s face changed. That one landed too.
He shrugged one shoulder.
“You were so… you. About it. Complicated. Smart. Scary. Impossible. I think part of me started telling people because it made it feel more real than you sometimes let it be.”
She was quiet for a long moment after that.
Then she moved. Not away. Toward him.
Carefully, because of his leg, because of everything, because that was how she always loved—attentive even in small movements.
She tucked herself into his side, head against his shoulder, hand still in his.
Max let his cheek rest lightly against the top of her head.
For a while neither of them said anything.
Then Ana murmured, half into his shirt:
“You still need better information security protocols.”
Max smiled into her hair.
“Probably.”
“Definitely.”
“Okay.”
She shifted a little closer.
“And for the record,” she said, voice softer now with sleep already beginning to blur the edges of it, “I’m glad I gave in too.”
***
Lonely paradise (Part 1)
Sumary: During a holiday with his friends after the World Championship, Lando Norris didn’t expect to find love. He also didn’t expect to like the fact that she apparently had no idea of who he was. At first, it wasn’t really a lie, just an omission, but quickly he buries himself into more and more lies. How will he get himself out of it ?
Pairing : Original female character x Lando Norris
Genre : fluff, love at first sight, miscommunication
Word count : 13,9k
Main Masterlist
Series Masterlist
The Bahamas had the kind of beauty that almost felt offensive.
The sea was too blue, too clear, too impossibly alive beneath the wash of afternoon sun. The white sand looked powdered, untouched, like something made for postcards instead of people. Palm trees bent lazily in the warm breeze, shadows sliding across the terrace of the sprawling beachfront Airbnb Lando had rented for himself and his friends. The house was ridiculous in the way only money could make things ridiculous: glass walls, an infinity pool spilling toward the ocean, white stone floors that stayed cool under bare feet, soft ambient lighting that made everything look expensive even in silence.
It should have felt like paradise.
And for everyone else, maybe it did.
Music drifted from the outdoor speakers while Max Fewtrell shouted something from the pool, his voice mixing with Tom’s laughter and Eddie’s mocking reply. Pietra was stretched out on a lounger with sunglasses on, one arm dangling toward the water while Alissa sat beside her with a drink sweating in her hand. Keegan had a football tucked under one arm and was trying, unsuccessfully, to convince everyone to play.
The whole place was alive with the easy, careless joy of people who had come to forget themselves for a week.
Lando stood at the edge of the terrace with a glass in his hand and looked out at the ocean.
A month ago, he had won the world championship.
If he said it in his head enough times, it still didn’t sound real. The thing he had chased for years, the thing that had shaped every sacrifice, every pressure headache, every lonely hotel room, every impossible expectation, it was his now. He had crossed the finish line with his heart in his throat and the radio exploding in his ears, and afterward there had been noise and cameras and hands on his shoulders and champagne and tears he hadn’t meant to let anyone see.
He had done it. He had really done it.
And yet, standing there in the gold spill of a Bahamian sunset, the glass cool in his hand, he felt hollow in a way he didn’t know how to explain.
He had thought winning would fix something.
He hadn’t known what, exactly. The restlessness maybe. The constant ache. The strange, gnawing loneliness that had followed him even in rooms full of people chanting his name. He had thought there would be some finality to it, some peace. A door closing. A wound healing.
Instead, he had won, and the world had gotten louder.
Everyone wanted something from him now.
His time, his face, his smile, his attention. More interviews, more congratulations from people who barely knew him. More women who looked at him like he was a trophy they could touch. More strangers insisting they understood him because they had seen him cry behind a visor.
He was exhausted by being seen and not known.
“Oi!”
He turned his head.
Max was waist-deep in the pool, damp hair pushed back, squinting against the light. “You planning to stand there looking tragic all holiday or are you getting in?”
Lando huffed a laugh through his nose. “I am in holiday mode.”
“That’s your holiday mode?” Tom called from somewhere behind Max. “You look like someone just told you the next F1 season is cancelled.”
Pietra lifted her sunglasses just enough to peer over them. “Leave him alone. Maybe he’s being contemplative.”
“Contemplative?” Max barked out a laugh. “He’s twenty-six, not eighty-six.”
Lando rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth tugged anyway. Around them, the light deepened from gold to amber, softening the edges of everything. Beyond the terrace, the sea moved in slow, glossy ripples, eternal and indifferent.
He should have been happy.
He was happy, he told himself.
Just tired.
That was the answer he gave most people because it was easy, because nobody pushed when you said tired. Tired implied sleep could fix it. Tired sounded temporary.
No one wanted to hear that sometimes he felt like his own life was happening at a distance, as if he were watching it from behind glass.
By the time they all started getting ready to go out, the house had fallen into that chaotic, familiar rhythm of shared pre-drinks and half-finished conversations shouted through open doors.
Tom had control of the speaker now, which meant the music had gotten worse.
Alissa was in one of the upstairs bathrooms doing her makeup while telling Pietra a story loud enough for half the house to hear. Max was somehow dressed before everyone else and already on his second drink, leaning in the kitchen doorway like he had never been burdened by a serious thought in his life.
Lando came downstairs last.
A black shirt, open at the throat. Dark trousers. A watch worth more than he liked to think about. Hair styled just enough to look effortless.
The second he stepped into the open-plan living room, there was a short pause.
Tom looked up first and grinned. “There he is. World champion aura.”
“Shut up,” Lando said.
“No, genuinely,” Alissa said, appearing from the hall. “It’s disgusting, actually. You somehow look richer.”
“More insufferable too,” Max added.
Pietra glanced over, then smiled. “You do look nice.”
Lando dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Thanks.”
Eddie finally got his shoe back and shoved it on. “Tonight’s easy for you anyway.”
Lando frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Everyone exchanged the kind of look that was only funny if you weren’t the one receiving it.
Tom spread his hands. “Mate. Be serious.”
Keegan snorted. “You’re Lando Norris.”
“And now,” Max said with exaggerated importance, stepping forward as if delivering a grand announcement, “Lando Norris, Formula 1 World Champion, girls will be throwing themself at you.”
“Oh my God,” Lando muttered. “You’re unbearable.”
“But are we wrong?” Alissa asked.
He didn’t answer.
That was the problem, really. They weren’t wrong.
The club they went to was one of those painfully exclusive places designed to make exclusivity itself feel like part of the entertainment.
A low, bass-heavy pulse vibrating through polished walls before they even got inside. The sort of place where everyone looked expensive and half the people there were trying very hard to be noticed pretending they weren’t.
A hostess with a perfect smile and slicked-back hair guided them toward a raised VIP booth overlooking the main floor. Everything below was a blur of colored lights and moving bodies, perfume and heat and laughter sharpened by alcohol. The music was loud enough to be felt in bone.
Lando sank onto the curved leather seat and accepted the drink someone placed in his hand.
From up there, he could see almost everything.
People dancing in packs under pink and violet lights. Tables glittering with bottles and sparklers and forced fun. Faces turned toward phones every few seconds, capturing themselves from angles they had practiced. Everybody performing enjoyment as if they were terrified of what might happen if they stopped.
His friends adapted instantly.
Max disappeared into conversation with a group at the next table within minutes. Tom was laughing already, one arm slung around Eddie’s shoulder. Pietra and Alissa had gone to dance. Keegan was talking to someone near the bar, half shouting over the music.
Lando stayed seated, drink in hand, one ankle over the opposite knee.
At some point, one of the girls who had been circling near their section for the past twenty minutes made her move.
She didn’t ask permission before sliding into the empty space beside him.
“Hi,” she said, leaning close enough that he could smell her perfume over the club and over his drink, something sharp and sweet and heavy. “You looked lonely.”
Lando turned his head and gave her a small smile because that was easier than immediate rejection, especially when he didn’t yet have the energy for a conversation.
“Did I?”
“A little.”
Her hand landed lightly on the edge of the table near his glass, her nails pale and immaculate, her whole posture arranged toward him as if she had already decided she would be welcome there.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe I am.”
That answer seemed to delight her.
Lando looked back toward the dance floor, then at the bottle on the table, then finally at her again. Under different circumstances, years ago maybe, he probably would have found her attractive in a way that felt more active than observational. She was beautiful. Obviously. But all he could really feel now was the weight of the room, the noise of it, and the faint emptiness of being wanted in ways that no longer seemed to require any effort from anyone involved.
“You're Lando Norris right?” she asked.
“Yeah, and you are?” he asked, mostly because silence would have been ruder than he had the appetite to be.
“Victoria.”
He nodded once, taking a sip of his drink.
Victoria shifted a little closer, enough that her leg brushed his for a second in the booth. Not accidental. Nothing about her was accidental. She looked at him through lashes that had probably taken time to achieve this exact shape of effortless.
“So,” she asked, “world champion. How does that feel?”
He let out a short breath through his nose, halfway between a laugh and something more tired.
“Depends when you ask.”
She tilted her head. “And now?”
Lando glanced around the club. Max was somewhere deeper in the room with Tom and Eddie, already dragged into the sort of loud holiday conversation that would stretch toward sunrise if left unchecked. Pietra and Alissa were dancing. Everyone looked like they were having the kind of fun the night had been designed to provide.
And he, sitting in a private booth with a beautiful blonde pressing a little too close and calling him world champion like it was a flirtation line rather than a title he had bled for, felt strangely absent from all of it.
“Now?” he said. “Loud.”
Victoria laughed as if he’d said something more charming than he actually had.
“I can help with that.”
The line was obvious enough to be almost old-fashioned, but she delivered it with confidence, which probably made it work on plenty of men. She reached for his glass then, took it from his hand without asking, and sipped from the same side before giving it back. Her eyes stayed on him while she did it, gauging him, testing.
Lando took the glass but didn’t drink.
Normally, maybe, he would have played the game a little more cleanly. Flirted properly or shut it down properly. Done one thing or the other. But tonight he seemed unable to commit to either. He wasn’t interested, not really. And yet he was too tired, too disconnected, to push her away with the firmness she probably deserved if he truly wanted the interaction over. So he stayed in that useless middle ground, not encouraging enough to feel fully engaged, not distant enough to end it.
Victoria, unfortunately, seemed very good at treating that kind of passivity as permission.
She smiled again, softer now, more private.
“You’re quieter than I expected,” she said.
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” She leaned in, shoulder almost brushing his chest now. “More celebration. More…” She made a vague gesture with one hand. “Energy.”
Lando laughed once. “Disappointing, then.”
“Not yet.”
There was something almost predatory in the patience of that answer, though wrapped well enough in flirtation that most people probably wouldn’t have called it that. She had decided he was attainable, or at least worth pursuing, and she seemed willing to do most of the work herself.
He looked at her for a second longer than necessary, trying to work out whether his boredom made this feel meaner than it otherwise would have.
Victoria took his silence and smiled as if he had just admitted something.
“See?” she said. “You’re not asking me to leave.”
It was a light sentence. Playful. But it landed oddly.
Lando leaned back against the booth. “Should I?”
She laughed again, pleased rather than warned. “No.”
Then her hand touched his wrist.
It was a simple gesture, not even especially bold by the standards of the room, but intimate enough that it should probably have prompted a real response from him one way or another. Instead he looked down at it, then back up at her, and felt only that same strange emptiness widening under the noise.
He could have kissed her, maybe.
Could have gone through the motions, let the night become the sort of night it had expected from him from the second he walked in. She would have made it easy. That was the whole point. He could see it already in the confidence of her posture, in the way she’d angled herself toward him, in how quickly she laughed at things he hadn’t even intended as jokes.
And God, that was exactly the problem.
Easy.
Everything about it was too easy now.
“So,” Victoria said, tracing one finger idly along the back of his hand, “are you always this difficult, or do I just need another drink before you become interesting?”
That finally got a proper smile out of him, though it was brief.
“There he is,” she murmured.
But the truth was, even smiling, felt wrong. Her beauty did nothing to sharpen him into wanting. It only made the whole interaction feel like a role he had already played too many times and no longer had the energy to perform well.
Victoria mistook his silence again for invitation.
She moved even closer, her mouth near his ear now to get around the music. “We could get out of here for a bit.”
Lando turned his head slightly, enough to hear her properly.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He had.
And still, for one second, he didn’t dismiss her.
Not because he wanted to go.
Not because he was tempted.
But because some old reflex in him still lagged behind what he actually felt. The version of himself who let nights like this carry him wherever they wanted because there was no reason not to, still existed enough to create a pause before refusal. And Victoria, sharp enough to read weakness when she saw it, seemed to take that pause as a victory.
Her smile deepened.
“I know somewhere quieter,” she said.
That was the moment something in him recoiled fully.
Not from her exactly, but from the whole shape of the night. From the script. From how predictable it suddenly felt. From the fact that she was beautiful and interested and half in his lap in a private club in the Bahamas and all he could think about was how exhausted he was.
Lando sat up a little straighter and gently took his hand back.
“No actually I'm good.”
Victoria blinked.
It wasn’t outrage. More confusion. As if she had already moved several steps ahead in her head and had not expected the path to disappear under her.
“No?” she repeated.
He shook his head once. “No.”
For a second, she looked as if she might push harder. Test whether the refusal was real or just another stage in the game.
Then she smiled again, but thinner now.
“Your loss.”
“Probably,” he said, though they both knew he didn’t mean it.
Victoria looked at him for another second, perhaps trying to decide whether he was acting bored to increase his own value or whether he was genuinely not interested. Then she slid out of the booth with all the same practiced grace she’d used coming in.
“Maybe another night,” she said.
Lando didn’t answer.
He watched her disappear back into the room and felt, not triumph, not relief exactly, but something closer to quiet disgust. Not with her, mostly with the way his life had made all of this so automatic.
His gaze drifted past the vip booth and swept over the dance floor below.
And that was when the thought hit him, sudden and ugly in its clarity.
They all looked the same.
Not exactly, of course. Different dresses, different faces, different voices. But also not different at all. The same polished smile, the same surgically perfected softness in the same places, the same dresses, the same impossible heels, the same brittle laugh that sounded a second too late, like an echo of what it thought laughter should be.
Beautiful, yes, but empty in a way that made his chest ache.
Or maybe he was the empty one. Maybe that was the real problem.
He took a slow sip of his drink and felt loneliness settle heavily behind his ribs.
Below him, his friends were having fun. Real fun. Max had Pietra laughing at something while Tom was dancing like an idiot beside them, entirely unashamed. Alissa was holding onto Eddie’s shoulder to keep from falling over.
Everyone looked alive.
Lando felt like a ghost in his own celebration.
“Mate.”
He looked up.
Max slid into the seat beside him, drink in hand, face slightly flushed from alcohol and heat. “Why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve just been told your dog died.”
Lando gave him a flat look. “That’s dramatic.”
Max glanced past him, then leaned a little closer. “The blonde girl’s still looking at you, by the way.”
Lando followed his gaze automatically. Near the end of the booth, Victoria was indeed still watching him.
She smiled when she caught him looking.
He looked away first.
Max frowned. “Seriously?”
“What?”
“That. What was that?”
Lando took another sip. “Nothing.”
“No, no. Don’t do that.” Max nudged his arm. “She’s been into you since we got here.”
“So?”
“So?” Max repeated, incredulous. “Since when is that a so?”
Lando stared down at the amber liquid in his glass. The ice clinked softly when he tilted it.
“I don’t know,” he said after a moment.
Max watched him, confusion turning slowly into suspicion. “Are you ill?”
Lando let out a quiet laugh. “What?”
“I’m serious. Who are you and what have you done with my friend?”
Lando shook his head, but Max didn’t laugh with him.
“Normally,” Max continued, “you’d have been over there ten minutes ago.”
“Maybe I’m growing as a person.”
Max stared. “That’s the least convincing thing you’ve ever said.”
For the first time that night, a real smile almost broke through. Almost.
Then it faded.
Lando rubbed a hand over his jaw and looked back out over the club. “It’s too easy.”
Max blinked. “Too easy?”
“Yeah.”
“What does that even mean?”
Lando shrugged, though it felt stiff. “I don’t know. It’s just...”
He searched for the words and hated that they didn’t come naturally.
“She’s already into me,” he said at last. “Before I’ve even said anything worth being into.”
Max barked out a short laugh. “Right. Tragic.”
“No, but that’s what I mean.” Lando turned to him, frustration creeping into his voice. “What’s the point?”
Max’s expression shifted. “The point is you find her fit, she finds you fit, you flirt, you hook up, everyone has a nice time. This has literally never confused you before.”
“That’s not...” Lando stopped, exhaled. “It used to feel different.”
“How?”
“There used to be...” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something. A chase, I guess.”
Max stared at him for a beat, then leaned back slightly as if inspecting him from a safer distance.
“A chase ? When do you think you are living, in the 17th century?” he mocked him.
Lando looked at him. “Don’t.”
But Max was laughing now, properly laughing, eyes bright with disbelief. “No, because what is this? Since when have you become some tragic poet in a nightclub?”
Lando tried to smile, but it didn’t hold.
Max’s laughter faded first.
The bass from the speakers rolled through the booth. Around them, glasses clinked, strangers shouted, someone squealed in delight below. The whole room glittered with movement.
“You’re serious ?” Max said quietly.
Lando looked away.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Max lowered his voice. “What’s actually going on?”
That should have been easy to answer.
He could have said nothing. Could have shrugged it off, made some joke, blamed the jet lag or the hangover he didn’t have. Max would have accepted it eventually. They all would.
But the truth had been pressing against the inside of his chest for days now, maybe longer, and the alcohol had softened the edges enough that he couldn’t hold it back the same way.
“I won,” Lando said.
Max frowned. “Yeah.”
“I won the championship.”
“Yes, mate. I was there.”
Lando swallowed. “And I thought it would feel different after.”
A flicker passed over Max’s face. Not confusion now. Something more careful.
“Different how?”
Lando gave a helpless little shake of his head. “I don’t know. Better. Quieter.” He stared out at the dance floor. “Like maybe I’d stop feeling like I’m constantly running after something.”
Max didn’t interrupt.
Instead, he let the silence sit there between them, rare and gentle.
Lando laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
Lando gripped his glass harder than he needed to. “Everyone keeps looking at me like I should be the happiest person in the world.”
“Well...”
“I am happy,” he said quickly, defensively, as if Max had accused him of ingratitude. “I know what I’ve got. I know how lucky I am. I know people would kill for this life.”
Max nodded once. “I know you know.”
“But it’s like...” He broke off again, jaw tightening. The words felt jagged in his throat. “It’s like I got this thing. The best thing. And for a minute it was everything. Then the minute ended and I was still me and I still feel like crap.”
Max looked down at his drink.
That hurt more than Lando had expected it to, saying it out loud.
“So no,” he said after a moment, voice quieter now. “I can’t do it anymore.”
Max turned back to him. “Can’t do what?”
“This.” Lando gestured vaguely at the room, at Victoria circling the booth, at the whole glittering machinery of it. “Pretend I want something just because it’s easy to have. Pretend I don’t notice when it feels fake.”
Max was silent.
Lando swallowed hard. The room suddenly felt too hot, the air too close.
“They all laugh at everything I say now,” he murmured, more to himself than to Max. “Even when I’m not funny. Even when I say nothing. They look at me and they already know who I’m supposed to be.” He let out a shaky breath. “And maybe that should be flattering, but it just makes me feel...” He searched again, then gave up. “Alone.”
Something in Max’s face changed then. The teasing disappeared completely, leaving behind only concern and something almost sad.
“You should’ve talk to me sooner.”
Lando gave a small, tired smile. “And tell you what? That being world champion has made me weirdly existential ?”
Max snorted despite himself. “When you put it like that, yeah, a bit pathetic.”
That got a real laugh out of Lando, brief and frayed though it was.
Then Max sobered again. “Still. You don’t have to sit here and suffer through it.”
Lando looked around once more.
Then he set his drink down.
“I think I’m going home.”
Max studied him for a second. “You want me to come?”
Lando shook his head. “No. Stay.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Max hesitated, then nodded. “Alright.”
Lando stood, smoothing a hand over the front of his shirt. For some reason the movement felt heavier than it should have, like pulling himself through water.
Max caught his wrist lightly before he could go.
“Lan.”
He looked down.
“You’re allowed to not be okay all the time,” Max said. “Even now.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
Lando looked away first, throat suddenly tight. “I know.”
But he wasn’t sure he did.
He left the booth alone.
No dramatic exit. No scene. Just a quiet nod to the others when they noticed him slipping away, a vague gesture that meant tired, going back, don’t worry. Tom frowned but accepted it. Pietra gave him a small, searching look. Alissa mouthed are you okay? and he gave her a thumbs up he didn’t mean.
Then he was weaving through the crowd, the music pounding against his spine, bodies brushing against him in the dark.
Outside, the night air hit him like mercy.
Warm, salted, alive.
The club’s bass throbbed dully behind the walls, muted now by distance. In front of him, the street glowed under scattered lights, palm shadows stretching long and black over the pavement. Somewhere farther off, he could hear the sea.
He exhaled slowly.
For the first time all night, he felt like he could breathe.
The sky was clear.
A dark velvet expanse pricked through with stars, careless in their beauty. The kind of sky you only really noticed when you were sad enough to look for something bigger than yourself.
He thought about the championship trophy sitting back at the house.
About the endless congratulations.
About the women in the club with their perfect smiles and empty interest.
About how he had everything he had ever wanted and still felt like there was some unnamed grief living quietly inside him.
The music still followed him for a while.
Even after the club had disappeared behind him, swallowed by palm trees and expensive walls and the careless glitter of people who didn’t know when to stop, the bass seemed lodged somewhere under Lando’s skin. A dull thud. A pulse that lingered in his ribs long after the sound itself had faded.
One of the taxi driver stepped forward politely. “Mr. Norris?”
Lando shook his head. “No, thank you. I’ll walk.”
The man looked surprised, though he covered it quickly. “Sir, it’s a bit of a distance.”
“It’s fine.”
It wasn’t really fine. It was late, and he was tired, and his shirt still smelled faintly of expensive cologne and cigarette smoke and the stale air of a room full of people pretending to be interested in one another. But the map on his phone said thirty minutes if he followed the coastline, and right then thirty minutes of silence felt less like inconvenience and more like survival.
He needed to think.
Or maybe not think at all.
That was the problem. His head was too full and too empty at the same time.
So he left the road, cut down toward the beach, and let the dark open up around him.
At night the Bahamas became something else entirely.
The daytime version felt like a performance sometimes, too beautiful to be fully real. But at night the island softened. The sea turned black and silver, the horizon vanished, and the only light came in broken pieces: the moon caught in the waves, the dim glow from distant resorts, the occasional amber shimmer from a house set high above the shore.
The beach was mostly empty.
Just wind and tide and his own footsteps pressing into damp sand.
He loosened the top button of his shirt as he walked. His shoes sank slightly with every step, the air warm but no longer suffocating, and little by little the tension in his chest began to shift. Not ease, exactly. Just move. Become something he could carry without feeling crushed by it.
He hadn’t felt like this in a long time.
And that was what unsettled him most.
Because the season had been brutal, emotionally, physically, mentally, in every possible way. There had been weekends where he could barely hear himself think over the pressure, races where his heart had pounded so hard before lights out he’d thought he might be sick, endless meetings and debriefs and travel and expectations and headlines dissecting every choice he made. He’d been stretched thin for months. There had been nights he’d barely slept and mornings he’d woken up already exhausted.
And still, somehow, he found himself wishing he could go back.
Back to the circuits, the rhythm, the purpose.
Back to something that made sense.
At least there, every feeling had a reason.
Stress belonged to lap times. Fear belonged to corners taken too fast. Frustration belonged to strategy calls and tyre degradation and impossible margins. Even when it was painful, it was clean. Understandable. There was always something to do with it.
This, this strange, hollow ache in the middle of paradise, had nowhere to go.
He glanced down at his phone just to check the map again, the blue line cutting along the coastline toward the villa.
He kept walking.
His mind drifted where it always drifted when he was tired enough not to stop it.
Back to the first year.
Back to the strange, disorienting beginning of becoming someone people recognized.
Formula 1 had changed his life in all the obvious ways first. The travel, the money, the cameras, the constant movement. His name taking up more space than it used to. Suddenly people knowing who he was before he introduced himself. Suddenly rooms opening. Invitations arriving. Doors unlocking.
Girls had been a whole different thing.
It sounded pathetic when put plainly. Embarrassing, even. But it was true.
When he was younger, he hadn’t exactly been the type girls his age lost their minds over. He had not been the obvious one. Not the effortlessly desired one. He had been lanky and awkward in ways that had taken time to smooth out, too busy with racing and travel and his own uncertainty to know what to do with himself in normal teenage spaces. Other boys had seemed to understand flirting instinctively. They had known how to stand, how to talk, how to touch, how to take up room in a way that drew people in.
Lando had mostly known cars.
And then, gradually, everything shifted.
He got older. More exposed. More confident, or at least better at pretending. The money came. The fame sharpened. His face became more familiar, his life more desirable from the outside. People started looking at him differently. Women too. Suddenly what had once felt inaccessible became easy, almost absurdly easy.
He’d enjoyed it.
He could admit that.
He had slept with his share of women. He had enjoyed the attention, the ego boost, the uncomplicated thrill of being wanted without having to ask for it. There had been something intoxicating about it at first, something healing in a shallow sort of way. To be looked at like that. To be chosen. To realize that the version of himself who had once felt too awkward, too boyish, too outside of it all had become the kind of man women noticed before he even spoke.
It had soothed something old and ugly in him.
A complex he’d never named because naming it would have made it real.
And for a while that had been enough.
Maybe more than enough.
But somewhere along the line, the whole thing had started to feel repetitive. Then mechanical. Then empty. Not all at once. Quietly. Gradually. The way disillusion usually happened, so slowly you only noticed it once it had already taken root.
He dragged a hand through his hair and exhaled.
“Jesus,” he muttered to himself. “Maybe Max is right.”
Maybe he was getting emotional.
Maybe this was what happened when you won the thing you’d built your entire life around and discovered that underneath all the noise you were still just a person with the same mess inside him.
The beach grew darker as he walked farther from the main strip of hotels and clubs.
There were fewer lights here, fewer signs of life. Just the moon, thin and pale, and the long band of sand stretching in both directions. His footsteps softened in the damp edges of the shore. Somewhere farther inland, a palm frond rattled in the breeze.
He might have missed her at first if she hadn’t been moving toward him.
A pale shape in the distance.
At first just a silhouette against the dark, too far to make out clearly. He slowed almost without thinking, eyes narrowing. For a second he thought it might be a trick of the light, some bit of fabric caught on driftwood, maybe, or someone much farther away than he’d assumed.
But no.
It was person, walking toward him.
As the distance between them closed, the figure sharpened.
A woman.
She had very long hair, dark and wavy, falling almost to the end of her back. The wind kept lifting strands of it around her shoulders, tangling them against the white fabric of her dress. It was long too, though not designed for beaches, something soft and elegant that probably belonged under chandeliers and not under moonlight on uneven sand. In one hand she held a pair of heels, and every few steps she seemed to stumble slightly as her bare feet sank into the shore.
There was something disoriented in the way she moved.
Not drunk exactly.
Just… lost.
Lando slowed more.
And then she got close enough for him to see her face.
Her makeup was running.
Not badly enough to look messy, somehow, but enough that the evidence of it sat stark under the moonlight: darkened lashes clinging together, the faint smudged shadow beneath her eyes, the wet shine of tears still slipping silently down her cheeks. Her expression looked strangely blank, as if whatever had upset her had happened long enough ago for the first shock to pass but not long enough for her to know what to do with herself afterward.
He felt something in his chest tighten.
She saw him at nearly the same moment and she startled.
It was small, but unmistakable, the way her shoulders tensed, the way she stopped dead, the way her fingers closed harder around her heels. Her entire body seemed to pull inward on instinct.
Lando immediately understood why.
A woman alone, in the middle of the night, on a dark beach, meeting a man she didn’t know.
He lifted his hands slightly, palms open, stopping where he was so he wouldn’t seem like he was closing in on her.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, gently. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She didn’t answer.
Up close, she looked younger than he’d first thought. Not young-young, but maybe around his age. Her eyes were dark, wide with the kind of caution that came before trust, and there was something almost painfully fragile in the way she stood there trying not to show she was afraid.
He kept his voice calm. “Are you okay?”
She stared at him for a second, breathing a little too shallowly.
“Do you need help with something?” he asked.
Another pause.
For a moment he wondered if she didn’t speak English. There was hesitation in her face that wasn’t only fear; it looked like she was translating, measuring, deciding whether it was worth answering at all.
Then finally she spoke.
“My phone…” Her voice was soft, roughened slightly as if she’d been crying for a while. She lifted the device in one hand and showed it to him. The screen was completely black. “It just died.”
As if to prove she wasn’t inventing an excuse, she pressed the side button. Nothing happened.
“I was with friends,” she added, swallowing. “But I lost them.”
Lando looked at the dead screen, then back at her face.
There was no performance in her. No recognition. No widening of the eyes that said she knew exactly who he was and was about to act accordingly.
She looked scared, tired, and upset.
“Right,” he said softly. “Okay.”
He pulled his own phone from his pocket and unlocked it without thinking. “Use mine.”
The offer came so naturally he only realized what he’d done after he had already held it out.
Normally he would never, not to a stranger.
Definitely not his phone.
There was far too much on it he didn’t want floating around: messages, photos, private notes, group chats, pieces of his life the press would love to get their hands on and twist into headlines. He was careful with personal things. Paranoid sometimes, probably for good reason.
But standing there on a dark beach, looking at this woman in her ruined makeup and white dress and obvious distress, that instinct simply didn’t arrive in time.
She blinked, surprised.
“That would be very kind,” she said.
Then, more carefully, as though she still couldn’t quite believe he meant it: “Thank you.”
He stepped closer just enough to hand it to her.
Her fingers brushed his for the briefest second, cold despite the heat of the night.
She moved a little away from him to make the calls, which he appreciated. She angled the phone away and tucked some hair behind her ear, then brought it to her face.
The first call rang.
No answer.
She lowered the phone, pressed another number. Waited again.
Nothing.
A third.
Still nothing.
Lando watched her expression change with every unanswered call. Not dramatic disappointment, just a kind of resigned hurt, as if each silence confirmed something she had already begun to fear.
Eventually she lowered the phone and came back toward him, holding it out with both hands this time.
“It is no use,” she said quietly. “They are probably busy or something.”
Busy.
The word bothered him more than it should have.
What sort of friends left someone alone long enough on a foreign island for her to end up wandering down the beach in tears with a dead phone?
He took the phone back, his mouth tightening.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
She named the hotel, then pointed vaguely behind him, farther along the coast.
Lando frowned immediately. “That way?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s...” He glanced down at his map, then turned the screen toward her. “You’re going the wrong direction.”
She stepped closer to look.
In the dim light from the phone, he got a better look at her face. She was beautiful, but not in the glossy, predictable way. Her features were softer, more arresting because they felt uncurated. Dark eyes, a straight nose, full mouth now parted with tired disbelief. Even with the streaks from her tears, maybe especially with them, there was something heartbreakingly human about her.
He pointed at the screen. “See? You were here. Your hotel is up there. You’ve gone past the turn.”
For a second she just stared at the map.
Then she looked up at him, exhausted and incredulous. “You are kidding.”
A tired little laugh escaped her, humorless and on the edge of despair. “I have been walking for, like, ages.”
“Yeah,” Lando said gently. “Looks like it.”
She closed her eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of her nose, still holding the heels loose in one hand. For a moment she looked less frightened than simply done. Worn out in that quiet way where a person stops expecting things to improve.
The sight of it made something in him twist unexpectedly.
She was not okay. That much was obvious now. Whether because of whatever had happened before he found her or because the night had just become too much afterward, he didn’t know. But she looked like someone only still standing because she had not yet been given permission to collapse.
He glanced once at the dark stretch of beach ahead, then back at her.
“My villa’s in the same area,” he said. “Not far from your hotel.”
She looked at him carefully again, mistrust flickering back in for only a second. Sensible. Necessary.
He kept his tone easy. “You can walk with me, if you want. It's the same direction anyway.”
She didn’t answer straight away.
The waves broke softly behind them.
Wind moved her hair across one shoulder, and she pushed it back with fingers that seemed faintly unsteady. Up close, he could see she was trying very hard to hold herself together.
“You do not have to,” she said after a moment.
“It’s fine.”
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me.”
She searched his face then, maybe for mockery, maybe for hidden intention, maybe just for the thing that would tell her whether saying yes was a mistake.
Lando let her look.
Finally she nodded.
“Okay,” she said softly.
Then, with a small attempt at politeness that made his chest ache for reasons he didn’t understand, she added, “Thank you… very much.”
He gave her a faint smile. “No problem.”
They started walking side by side.
Not close enough to touch. Not far enough to feel like strangers anymore.
For the first few moments, neither of them said anything. The beach stretched ahead in silver and shadow, their footsteps falling unevenly into the sand. She was slower than he was, and he adjusted without making it obvious. Every so often she shifted the heels from one hand to the other as though they had become heavier with time.
He looked over after a minute. “You want me to carry those?”
She glanced down at the shoes in her hand, then back at him, startled as if the offer itself had not occurred to her.
“Oh. No, it’s fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Then a beat later, with a tiny breath that was almost a laugh, “I think if I lose them too, it would be a very bad night.”
That got a quiet smile out of him.
“Fair.”
They walked a few more steps.
Then she said, “I am sorry if I looked rude before.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.” She drew in a breath. “I was just… scared.”
“I know.”
That seemed to surprise her more than anything else.
Most men, he guessed, would have taken offense. Would have wanted reassurance that they looked trustworthy, that they were different, that they personally should not be included in a woman’s fear.
Lando didn’t.
He knew what the world was like. Knew what women had to calculate every day without ever saying it aloud.
Something in her shoulders loosened after that.
Only a little. But enough.
A minute later she said, “What is your name?”
He glanced at her.
There it was. The ordinary question. Simple. Innocent. Usually loaded for him in ways it wasn’t for most people.
“Lando,” he said.
She repeated it softly, her accent curling around the vowels. “Lando.”
For some reason, hearing his name in her voice sounded different than he was used to. Less practiced. Less impressed. Like it was just a name.
“And you?” he asked.
She hesitated.
Then, very quietly, “Valentina.”
He turned the name over in his mind as they walked.
Valentina.
It suited her too well.
The beach stretched ahead of them in a long ribbon of silver and shadow, the sea rolling in beside them with that endless, patient sound that seemed to belong to another world entirely. Far behind, the noise of the clubs and bars had faded into nothing. Here there was only the hush of the tide, the wind moving across the sand, and the soft uneven rhythm of their footsteps.
Lando kept his pace slow.
Valentina was clearly struggling with the dress.
It was beautiful, but completely wrong for this. The white fabric clung around her legs whenever the wind pressed it against her, and every few steps the hem dragged in the sand, gathering weight. She had to lift it slightly with one hand to stop herself from tripping, while the other still held the pair of heels she had given up trying to wear. Her hair, long and dark and wild from the sea air, kept blowing into her face. She pushed it back absently every now and then, but most of the time she seemed too tired to bother.
He watched her almost stumble again and glanced away quickly before it looked too obvious.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said automatically.
The answer came too quickly.
He looked at her. “You sure?”
She gave a small, embarrassed smile. “No. But I will survive.”
That made him huff a laugh.
For a moment they walked in silence again, the kind that didn’t feel awkward so much as uncertain, both of them still measuring the shape of the other. Lando looked ahead at the dim lights in the distance, then back at her.
“So where were you going tonight?” he asked. “Before all of this.”
Valentina adjusted the dress again and exhaled through her nose, like the whole night had exhausted her beyond proper annoyance.
“Some fancy restaurant,” she said. She lifted one shoulder. “Then my friends wanted to go to the club.”
She said club with a faint distaste that made him glance at her again.
“I don’t really like this sort of place,” she continued. “But they said they were only going for a few minutes to get some drinks, and I did not want to make a problem. So I told them I would wait by the beach for a little while.”
Her mouth twisted.
“My phone died. I had no idea of the time. And…” She looked down at the sand as she walked. “Well. I think they forgot about me.”
Lando stopped for half a second before catching himself and continuing.
Forgot about her.
He felt a flash of anger sharp enough to surprise him. Not dramatic anger, not loud, just a hot and immediate disbelief.
Who did that?
Who left someone alone in the middle of the night on an island she clearly didn’t know, then didn’t even notice she was gone?
He looked over at her, at the tired set of her shoulders, the dried tracks of tears still silvering her cheeks in the moonlight.
“That’s…” He hesitated, not wanting to come in too harshly. “That’s really shit, actually.”
She let out a soft breath that might have been a laugh.
“Yeah.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, then took one back out again when the sand shifted awkwardly under his shoes.
“I mean,” he said carefully, “I don’t want to offend you, but they don’t sound like very good friends.”
He half expected her to bristle at that. But instead she laughed.
Not loudly. Not brightly. Just a tired, disbelieving little laugh that vanished almost as soon as it appeared.
“No,” she said. “I suppose they do not.”
Lando looked at her, and she shook her head slightly as if at herself.
“I don’t really know why I came,” she admitted. “Well...” she corrected, “I know why, but it was stupid.”
“It probably wasn’t.”
“It was a little stupid.”
There was enough self-awareness in the way she said it that he smiled despite himself.
“I only really know one of the girls,” she went on. “She is getting married. She invited all her bridesmaids for a girls-only trip.” Her expression softened briefly, but not enough to hide the disappointment underneath. “I thought it would be nice. You know? To enjoy the sun, the beach… maybe talk to the other girls, get along with them.”
She gave a tiny shrug.
“But apparently it is mostly an excuse to get drunk and flirt with boys, which is not really my thing anyway.”
Something about the way she said it, matter-of-fact, not judgmental, just tired, made him look away toward the sea.
He could almost hear Max laughing in his head.
Get drunk and flirt with girls.
That had been his plan tonight too, hadn’t it? Or something close enough. Maybe not even plan. Just habit. Instinct. The expected shape of a night out. Drink, laugh, pick someone, forget yourself for a few hours.
Yet now, walking beside her, he found himself weirdly reluctant to admit it.
Not because he was ashamed exactly.
At least not in the usual sense.
But because the idea of her folding him into that version of men, the loud, drunk, easy sort she clearly had no interest in, bothered him more than it should have.
“I don’t judge them,” she added after a moment, glancing at him. “Really. They can do what they want. I just… would have liked to know before I took a week off for this.”
He nodded. “That’s fair.”
She looked down at the hem of her dress, gathering it a little higher to keep it from catching.
“I could have gone somewhere else,” she murmured. “Or stayed home. Or gone with my sister to the coast, where at least there are no clubs.”
There was such quiet certainty in the answer that it pulled another little laugh out of him.
He watched her for a second, then looked away again before she could catch him doing it.
He wanted to ask what she did.
Not in the shallow, automatic way people asked each other at parties, only to wait impatiently for their turn to speak. He actually wanted to know. There was something about her that made him curious in a way he hadn’t felt around someone in a long time. Maybe because she didn’t seem to be performing herself for him. Maybe because she had no idea who he was and so every answer she gave felt clean of expectation.
But he hesitated.
The question felt strangely intimate out here in the dark. Too direct, maybe. Too close to turning this into one of those exchanges where the magic disappeared under the weight of ordinary details.
Before he could decide, she saved him from it anyway.
“And you?” she asked, glancing up at him. “What are you doing here alone on the beach in the middle of the night?”
He looked down at her, caught a little off guard.
The truthful version was easy enough: I went out with friends, got bored, left.
The fuller truth was uglier and more embarrassing.
He went out because I thought maybe some girl would distract me him whatever is wrong with him. He sat in a VIP booth and let strangers flirt with him and found himself unable to care. He left because suddenly the whole thing felt hollow in a way he could no longer ignore.
He chose the simpler version.
“I went out with friends,” he said. “To a club.”
Her expression shifted immediately into something halfway between sympathy and amused horror.
“And?”
“And I got bored.”
That much, at least, was true.
He did not add the rest. Did not mention that he had gone there exactly for the kind of shallow attention she had just dismissed. Did not mention that under normal circumstances, he would have agreed with her friends more than with her. Or used to, at least. He had spent enough nights half-drunk and reckless and entirely willing to let the dark blur into bodies and bad decisions. Once, that had sounded like the perfect holiday. Not just acceptable, ideal.
The fact that it no longer did still felt too raw to explain.
Valentina looked at him for a second, then smiled, a real smile this time, small but warm.
“So we are the same.”
Lando blinked.
“The same?”
She nodded. “Both escaping a club. Both walking in the sand in the wrong clothes.”
He glanced down at his shoes sinking into the sand and let out a laugh. “I think you’re more wrong-clothes than me.”
“Yes, ok maybe.”
He shook his head, smiling despite himself.
But the words stayed with him.
We are the same.
Under normal circumstances, he might have disagreed instantly. Might even have found it funny.
Because no, he wasn’t the same.
He liked going out. He liked drinking more than he probably should. He liked flirting, the easy kind and the dangerous kind, the kind that led somewhere and the kind that didn’t. He liked the recklessness of holidays, the permission they seemed to give people to become less careful with themselves. For years, that had been one of his favorite versions of freedom.
Or at least he had thought it was.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Now, beside her, the old certainty felt strangely outdated. Like a version of himself he had not yet formally said goodbye to but had somehow already outgrown.
And that unsettled him.
Because if that wasn’t him anymore, then who was he becoming?
He glanced at her sideways.
She was looking down at the sand, concentrating on her footing, the moonlight washing her profile in pale silver. The tear tracks on her cheeks had nearly dried now, though they still caught the light. Without the fear from before, she looked softer. Still tired, still wounded by the night in some quiet way, but calmer. Less alone, maybe.
He found himself absurdly glad about that.
The wind picked up a little, tossing her hair over her shoulder again. She stopped to brush it back, then bent slightly to free the hem of her dress from where it had twisted around her ankle.
Without thinking, Lando slowed and waited.
She noticed.
“You are very patient,” she said, straightening.
“I’m not, actually.”
“No?”
“No. I’m normally quite annoying.”
That earned him another smile. “Ah. Honest too.”
“Sometimes.”
“Dangerous combination.”
He looked at her, and for a second the world seemed to narrow strangely around that look.
It was ridiculous, really. They were just two strangers on a beach. Nothing had happened. Nothing was happening. And yet there was something unexpectedly delicate in the air between them now, something that made him unusually aware of everything: the line of her mouth, the softness of her voice, the way she said things as if she didn’t expect them to matter much and therefore made them matter more.
He cleared his throat and looked ahead again.
“So,” he said, letting the word stretch lightly between them, “you really just sat outside waiting for them?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
She made a small face. “I don’t know. Long enough to regret many things.”
“That’s insane.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, they are insane to have let you alone.”
She laughed again, more genuinely this time. “You sound offended.”
“I am offended.”
“On my behalf?”
“Yes.”
She looked up at him with open amusement now. “That is kind of you.”
“Well, someone should be.”
She shook her head, but he saw the smile linger.
A few more steps passed in quiet.
Then she said, more softly, “I think maybe I was trying too hard.”
“To do what?”
“To fit with them.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes when you know only one person in a group, you tell yourself maybe the others will become your people too if you are pleasant enough, easy enough, agreeable enough.” She glanced down. “It doesn’t always work.”
Lando felt that in a place he didn’t like having touched.
No, it didn’t.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “No. It doesn’t.”
She looked at him then, probably hearing something in his voice he hadn’t meant to reveal.
But again she didn’t press.
The sea moved beside them, black and endless.
In the distance ahead, the first lights from the quieter villa area were beginning to show, warm yellow squares scattered between palm silhouettes. Civilization again. Safety. An ending to the night.
He should have been relieved.
Instead he felt something unexpected and small tighten in his chest at the thought that eventually she would turn toward her hotel and that would be it. A stranger for an hour, then gone.
Ridiculous.
He had spent years around women without wanting anything beyond a few hours. Now one strange conversation with a crying girl on a beach and suddenly he was unsettled by the idea of reaching the destination too quickly.
He shoved that thought away before it could become embarrassing.
Valentina adjusted her grip on the shoes again and looked out at the water.
“It is funny,” she said.
“What is?”
“I thought tonight would be terrible.”
“And now?”
She considered it.
“Now,” she said slowly, “it is still terrible. But a little less.”
He laughed under his breath. “Glad I could improve your catastrophic evening.”
“You did.” She glanced up at him. “A lot, actually.”
The sincerity in it hit him unexpectedly hard.
He looked away toward the dark line of the sea, suddenly unable to think of a clever answer.
After a moment he said, quieter than before, “You improved mine too.”
For a second, neither of them spoke.
Then Valentina looked down with a small, almost shy smile, and they kept walking side by side through the moonlit sand, a little less lost than they had been before they found each other.
Lando glanced down again at the heels swinging from Valentina’s hand.
She was definitely struggling.
Every so often the hem of her dress tangled around her ankles and she had to stop to free it. The shoes in her hand did not help. They looked delicate but expensive, the kind of heels made to be admired across a restaurant table, not carried barefoot through half a beach in the middle of the night.
He watched her shift them from one hand to the other again and finally said, “Alright. Give them here.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“Your shoes.” He nodded toward them. “Let me hold them.”
She gave him a faintly suspicious look, though there was humor in it now. “You really want to carry my heels?”
“Yes.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“It’s clearly not okay.”
“It is.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Valentina.”
She looked down at the shoes as if reconsidering the entire concept of pride.
Then she sighed, half amused, half defeated, and held them out to him. “Fine.”
He took them from her hand.
They were lighter than he expected. Soft leather, absurdly elegant, probably worth more than any pair of shoes should be. The straps looped over his fingers as they resumed walking.
Valentina immediately gathered both sides of her dress instead, lifting the fabric slightly with both hands.
“Oh,” she said, sounding genuinely startled.
“What?”
“This is much easier.”
Lando laughed under his breath. “Well, I did propose that earlier.”
She glanced sideways at him, smiling now. “These shoes are quite expensive. I did not want a random stranger to run off with them.”
He looked down at the heels hanging from his hand. “Bit hard for me to do a dramatic getaway in the sand.”
“Yes, but still. They are my favorite.”
He let out a quiet laugh. “It’s not my size, so you’re safe.”
She looked at him for a second, then laughed.
And God, he liked that sound.
It was softer than he had expected, lower too, not sharp or practiced or performative. Nothing like the brittle laughter from the club earlier that night, the kind designed to flatter and fill space. Hers felt instinctive, unguarded, like it had slipped out before she had a chance to think about whether it looked good on her.
He found himself smiling before he meant to.
They walked a little farther, the silence between them now warm enough to sit inside.
Then he asked, “So what’s the rest of your plan here? On the island, I mean.”
Valentina made a face almost immediately.
“The plan,” she said, sounding bored just by repeating it, “is apparently to sleep all day and go out all night.”
He turned his head toward her.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
There was such flat disappointment in her voice that he almost laughed again.
She shook her head, lifting the hem of her dress a little higher to avoid a deeper stretch of sand. “They do not want to do anything.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.” She exhaled, clearly still annoyed now that she was saying it out loud. “Not hiking in the mountains. Not going to the nature spots. Not even skinny dipping in the sea. We litteraly could've stayed in London it'll have been the same”
Lando looked at her.
The list hit him with two separate shocks at once.
The first was that her idea of an ideal holiday sounded, to him, faintly nightmarish.
The second came a beat later, hidden in the way she had said something else just before.
Could’ve stayed in London.
He felt himself pause internally, though his steps kept moving.
She lived in London.
That piece of information landed somewhere strange in him, somewhere too aware, and he hated how interested he suddenly was in it.
But he only addressed the first thing.
“I come here almost every winter,” he admitted, “and I’ve never once gone hiking or skinny dipping.”
Valentina stopped walking for half a second just to stare at him.
The expression on her face was so scandalized that he laughed immediately.
“What?”
She looked at him as if he had confessed to a crime.
“You are joking.”
“I’m not.”
“You come to a place like this and you do not do any of that?”
He lifted one shoulder. “I like doing nothing on holiday.”
She blinked. “Doing nothing?”
“Yeah.”
She looked deeply unimpressed.
Lando grinned despite himself. “Like… sleeping. Napping. Sitting by the pool. Going to restaurants with friends.”
“Boring.”
“That is not boring.”
“That is the definition of boring.”
He pressed a hand to his chest. “That’s offensive.”
“It is true.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “You’re ruthless, by the way.”
“No, I am right.”
He glanced over at her again, and she was smiling now, the moonlight catching at the curve of it.
“This place has beautiful nature spots,” she said. “It is wasted if you stay only in villas and restaurants.”
He pretended to think about it, though really he was still stuck somewhere between the image of her scandalized expression and the casual way she had said London.
Then he heard himself say, “Well… maybe you can show me one day.”
The words left his mouth lightly, almost as a joke.
But they did not feel light.
For him, it was a lot.
So much more than it should have been.
It was ridiculous, really, how suddenly aware he became of himself after saying it. Like his whole body had braced without permission. A small, stupid pulse of anxiety rose in his chest, absurdly intense for such an ordinary sentence. He had not felt like that in years. Not over asking a girl something simple. Not over making the first move. Normally it was easy, effortless even, or at least he had trained himself into making it look that way.
But this did not feel effortless.
This felt like risk.
Like opening a door and not knowing if she would smile and walk through it or close it gently in his face.
Valentina turned her head toward him.
For one terrible second, he thought she might say no.
Or worse, smile politely and pretend not to understand what he meant.
Instead she smiled.
“Why not?” she said. “You seem to like walking.”
And then she pointed with her chin behind them, back toward the long stretch of beach they had already crossed.
Lando laughed, relief loosening something in his chest so quickly it almost embarrassed him.
“So maybe you are secretly adventurous.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “Normally I prefer to drive, but…”
He stopped there.
The words had nearly gone somewhere dangerous.
Something close to Formula 1.
He did not want that tonight. He did not want to see the shift in someone’s face when recognition arrived, did not want the conversation to tilt and rearrange itself around his name. He wanted this, whatever this was, to stay untouched a little longer.
Valentina looked at him curiously. “But?”
He recovered quickly. “Normally I would have taken a cab.”
She nodded, accepting it. “Ah.”
“But not tonight,” he finished.
“No,” she said softly. “Not tonight.”
They kept walking.
Ahead of them, the beach was beginning to brighten in patches where nearby hotels and villas spilled warm light down toward the shore. The emptiness of the darker stretch behind them had given way to signs of the world again: faint music in the distance, lit balconies, palm trees edged in gold rather than shadow.
After a while, Valentina slowed and looked up.
“There,” she said, and there was relief in her voice this time, real and immediate.
Lando followed her gaze.
Her hotel had come into view, elegant and softly lit, set just back from the beach with terraces glowing in warm yellow light. Not far beyond it, he knew, was the quieter road leading toward the villas, including his own.
He held out her heels.
She smiled when she took them, and for some reason he noticed the way her fingers curled carefully around the straps, as if even now she did not quite trust the night to stop being strange.
They moved off the sand toward the paved path leading up to the hotel.
The ground was steadier there, better lit too, and Valentina paused to put her shoes back on. She wobbled almost immediately on one foot, and before he could think better of it, Lando reached out a hand.
She looked up at him, smiling faintly.
She took his hand to steady herself while she slipped the first heel on, then the second.
And with the better light from the hotel entrance falling over her properly for the first time, he got to look at her.
Really look at her.
Her eyes were not simply brown, as he had first assumed in the dark. There was green in them too, subtle and shifting, visible only when the light caught them at the right angle. Hazel, maybe, but deeper than that, richer. He noticed a tiny mole just beneath her right eye, so small he was surprised he had not seen it before. Her dress, which had seemed white on the beach, was not white at all but cream, soft and expensive-looking in a quieter way than white would have been.
He had thought she was beautiful already.
He realized now he had underestimated her.
The thought came to him plainly and without any of the usual detachment he relied on. She was even prettier than he had first thought, and worse than that, the more he saw of her the less it seemed to have anything to do with just her face.
She straightened once both heels were on and let go of his hand slowly.
“Thank you,” she said again, more softly this time. “Really.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets before he could do anything stupid like keep reaching for her. “It’s alright.”
“No,” she said, and shook her head. “It is more than alright.”
He looked at her and did not know what to do with the sincerity in her face.
Then, to his surprise, she said, “I can give you my number.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
She seemed to notice and smiled, a little shy now in a way she had not been before.
“You know,” she said, “if you still fancy a walk on the island one day.”
Her voice stayed light, but there was just enough uncertainty under it to make his chest tighten pleasantly.
“I’m staying two weeks,” she added. “So there is time.”
He smiled before he could stop himself.
“Me too.”
Something bright flickered across her face at that.
He pulled out his phone and handed it to her again, and this time he noticed that he did it without hesitation at all.
She entered her number, then sent herself a text.
“That way I will have yours too,” she said, glancing up at him. “Once I find a charger.”
She handed the phone back, and for a second they just stood there under the hotel lights, both smiling in that slightly uncertain way people did when something had gone better than expected and neither wanted to ruin it by moving too fast.
There was a little awkwardness then.
Not bad awkwardness.
Just awareness.
Of the hour. Of the end of the walk. Of the fact that they were still strangers, technically, despite how little that word seemed to fit anymore.
Lando slipped his phone back into his pocket.
“Well,” he said, nodding slightly toward the darker road beyond the hotel, “I should probably go. Still got like ten minutes on foot.”
Valentina’s smile widened.
“It is good training for our hike.”
He laughed, shaking his head.
And weirdly enough, the idea no longer sounded horrible.
Not even close.
“Yeah,” he said. “Guess it is.”
She stepped back once, the cream fabric of her dress catching the warm light, her heels finally where they belonged, her face no longer tear-streaked but calm.
“Goodnight, Lando.”
He swallowed, though he had no idea why a simple goodnight from her should land so strangely in his chest.
“Goodnight, Valentina.”
Then he turned and started back down the road toward the villa, the night warm around him, the sea still breathing somewhere beyond the palms.
And for the first time in longer than he wanted to admit, he walked away from a woman feeling lighter rather than emptier.
By the time Lando reached the villa, the sand in his shoes had become unbearable.
It had worked its way everywhere: between his toes, under the soles of his feet, into the hem of his trousers, clinging stubbornly to the sides of his shoes no matter how many times he’d tried to kick them clean against the road on the way back. His shirt was creased, his hair had been wrecked by the wind, and there was still enough salt on his skin from the sea air to make him feel sticky under the collar.
And yet, despite all of that, he was smiling.
Actually smiling.
Not the easy public one he had practiced for years. Not the amused, half-detached grin he used in interviews or around strangers or girls in bars when he wanted to seem effortlessly charming.
A real one.
Private. Unintended. Almost stupid.
He was still thinking about the way Valentina had said goodnight.
Still thinking about the small mole under her eye.
Still thinking about her voice when she had said, It is good training for our hike, like the idea of seeing him again had already settled naturally into her mind.
The front of the villa was lit up, warm golden lights spilling across the stone path and out toward the driveway. Music was coming from inside, louder than he expected, and as he pushed open the door, he was met instantly by the smell of alcohol, pool chlorine, and whatever Eddie had apparently decided to microwave.
He stopped in the entryway.
They were all there.
Tom was half-sprawled across one of the sofas in the open-plan living room, drink in hand, shoes kicked off somewhere near the coffee table. Alissa was sitting cross-legged on the rug with a bottle of water, laughing at something on Keegan’s phone. Eddie was at the kitchen counter attempting to make some sort of late-night food disaster. Pietra was curled up in one of the armchairs with her hair tied up messily now, no longer in club mode but still in the same dress. Max was leaning against the island, drink in hand, talking to Keegan, who looked pale, miserable, and deeply regretful.
The second the front door opened, half the room looked up.
Max frowned first. “Where the hell have you been?”
Lando blinked, still halfway between the beach and the villa in his head. “I walked.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Keegan, who looked like death in designer clothes, said flatly, “You what?”
“I walked back.”
Tom pushed himself upright on one elbow. “From the club?”
“Yeah.”
Eddie turned around from the kitchen. “Mate, are you concussed?”
Lando rolled his eyes and shut the door behind him. “It was only thirty minutes.”
“Only thirty minutes?” Max repeated. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s not that far.”
“On foot,” Alissa said, staring at him, “in those shoes?”
Lando glanced down. Fair point. His shoes were covered in sand, his trousers were dusty at the hems, and there was probably enough evidence on him to make the whole thing look even weirder than it sounded.
“Why are you all back anyway?” he asked, slipping off one shoe and immediately regretting how much sand poured out onto the floor.
“That,” Tom said, pointing dramatically across the room, “is Keegan’s fault.”
Keegan lifted one hand weakly without looking up. “I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying,” Pietra said.
“He threw up in the bathroom of the club,” Max supplied, sounding delighted by it now that the crisis had passed. “Security kicked us out.”
“I think ‘strongly encouraged to leave’ is more accurate,” Alissa corrected.
“I hate all of you,” Keegan muttered.
Lando laughed under his breath and set his other shoe by the door.
The laughter came easier than he expected.
Maybe too easily, because the moment Max really looked at him, his expression changed.
His eyes narrowed slightly, attention sharpening in that deeply annoying way that meant he had noticed something before anyone else had.
“What?” Lando said, already defensive.
Max didn’t answer straight away. He just looked at him.
Then his mouth twitched.
“Oh my God.”
Lando frowned. “What?”
“You have you're weird smile.”
“I’m not.”
“You have,” Max said, now visibly delighted. “You absolutely have.”
“I literally just walked in.”
“Yeah,” Max said, pushing off the counter, “and you look like some deranged bloke who got dumped into a sandbox and came back happier for it.”
Tom snorted.
Pietra leaned forward in her chair, studying him now too. “Actually, yes. You do look weirdly cheerful.”
Lando gave them all a look. “Can I not be in a good mood?”
“Not after leaving a club in an existential crisis, no,” Eddie said.
That got a few laughs.
Lando moved farther into the room, trying and failing to look casual as he reached for a bottle of water on the counter.
“It was just a walk,” he said.
Max made a face like he didn’t believe a word of it. “And?”
“And what?”
“And what happened on the walk?”
“Nothing.”
“Lando.”
He unscrewed the cap on the bottle and took a sip, buying time he didn’t need because it was already obvious this was going nowhere.
Max folded his arms. “You’re covered in sand, you disappeared for ages, and now you’re standing in our kitchen smiling. Something happened.”
Tom sat up fully now, interested. “Wait, actually, yeah.”
Lando exhaled through his nose.
He could have lied.
But Valentina’s laugh was still in his head, and the memory of her entering her number into his phone was sitting warm and alive somewhere under his ribs, and apparently that made him worse at pretending than usual.
He gave up.
“Fine,” he said. “I saw a girl.”
The room reacted immediately.
Tom slapped the sofa cushion. “There we go.”
Eddie turned fully around. “Knew it.”
Max pointed at him. “I knew it.”
Lando frowned. “Shut up. She was lost.”
That earned him a pause.
“A girl was lost?” Pietra asked.
He nodded. “Her phone died. She’d lost her friends. She was walking in the wrong direction.”
“And then what?” Max asked.
“I let her use my phone. Her friends didn’t answer. She was staying near here, so…” He lifted one shoulder. “I walked with her.”
Eddie’s eyebrows shot up. Then an absolutely unbearable grin spread across his face.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s why you’re covered in sand.”
Lando looked at him blankly. “What?”
Eddie leaned his elbows on the counter. “Enjoy her company a little too much, did you? End up hooking up on the beach?”
The thought hit Lando so wrong, so immediately wrong, that the reaction left his mouth before he could soften it.
“What? No. Of course not.”
The room went a little quieter.
Not silent. Just surprised.
Because they all heard it, the offense in his voice.
Not embarrassment, not evasiveness, actual offense.
He felt it too late.
And worse, he understood exactly why it had come out like that.
Thinking about Valentina that way, reducing the whole night to that, to some cheap, obvious ending in the sand, felt wrong. Very wrong. It made something in his chest recoil.
They had only walked.
That was all.
And somehow that had felt more intimate than half the people he had slept with.
He set the bottle down harder than he meant to.
“We just walked,” he said, more firmly now. “That’s it.”
Max’s expression shifted again, curiosity turning sharper, quieter. “Are you seeing her again?”
Lando hesitated only a second.
“I got her number.”
That got everyone’s attention all over again.
“Oh?” Alissa said.
He tried to sound casual and failed. “So, yeah. Probably.”
“How long is she here?” Tom asked.
“Two weeks.”
Pietra frowned slightly, confusion flickering over her face before she spoke. “You mean you actually plan on seeing her for that long?”
Lando looked at her.
She went on, unaware at first of how the question landed.
“I just mean…” she said, shrugging lightly, “normally you’d get tired after one night and switch to someone else.”
The silence that followed was immediate.
Lando felt the anger before he fully understood it.
Hot. Instant. Sharp enough that even he was caught off guard by it.
Maybe it was the words themselves. Maybe it was how easily they had come to her, how naturally they all accepted that version of him. Maybe it was because Valentina had spent half the walk talking about people who wanted only drunk nights and easy flirting and she hates it, and now here he was back in a room full of friends who apparently thought exactly the same thing of him.
Or maybe it was because some part of him hated how true it had once been.
Whatever the reason, the anger arrived whole.
“Maybe,” he said, too quickly, too sharply, “I’m not only thinking about sex all the time, God.”
Everyone stared at him.
His voice was louder now, and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop.
“I’m not that superficial.”
Silence fell fully then.
Tom sat frozen on the sofa. Eddie’s grin vanished. Alissa blinked, startled. Keegan, from his miserable little spot at the counter, looked up as if even his nausea had been interrupted by that tone.
Pietra’s expression changed first.
Not defensive. Just surprised and immediately sorry.
“I didn’t mean....” she started gently. “I’m sorry. I just…”
She glanced around as though looking for support, then back at him.
“It’s not like you ever said anything different before.”
Lando opened his mouth.
She hesitated, then added carefully, “You literally wanted to go out tonight because and I quote,” she made air quotes, quoting him as exactly as she could. “‘Girls are easier to slept with when they’re on holiday.’ So…”
It hit dead center.
Because he had said that.
Maybe not in those exact words. Or maybe exactly in those words. He honestly couldn’t remember now, only that it sounded enough like him to be true. And hearing it repeated back to him made something deep in him twist with humiliation.
He got offended anyway.
“I never said that.”
Max made a face.
Tom looked at the ceiling.
Eddie coughed into his fist in a way that looked suspiciously like hiding a laugh.
Lando glared at all of them. “I didn’t.”
“You absolutely did,” Max said.
“Maybe not like that.”
“That is almost word for word,” Alissa said.
He felt heat climb up the back of his neck.
The worst part was not that they were wrong.
The worst part was that hearing it out loud suddenly made him sound pathetic.
As if all he ever looked for was that sort of company: easy, temporary, flattering. As if that was all he was good for too. Not the kind of man who got something real. Not the kind someone like Valentina would ever look at twice if she knew him properly. Just someone built for short nights and shorter attention spans.
And under that humiliation was something even worse, something softer and far more dangerous.
Because for the first time in longer than he wanted to admit, he found himself wanting what he had always mocked in private.
Something like what Max and Pietra had.
Not just a girl and a good night and a number he never used.
A proper meet-cute, then a first date, a first kiss that mattered because it was attached to the rest of a person.
Being official.
Meeting parents.
Knowing someone’s coffee order and what they looked like when they were angry and what kind of film they put on when they were sad.
The thought should have been absurd.
Instead all he could think about, for no sane reason at all, was Valentina standing under the hotel lights with her cream dress and green-brown eyes, and a stupid thought crossed his mind so suddenly it nearly made him angry all over again:
What kind of ice cream would she order on a first date?
He stared at the kitchen counter.
Pistachio, maybe.
No, something less obvious.
Hazelnut?
Or lemon, because she seemed like the kind of person who would insist fruit flavors were underrated.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“Lan,” Max said more quietly now.
Lando didn’t look up.
The whole room had shifted. The party atmosphere from before had drained out, replaced by the awkward, careful stillness of people realizing they had stepped on something raw.
Pietra spoke first.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, softer this time. “I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
Lando finally exhaled.
The anger had nowhere to go now that it had burned through him. Underneath it was just embarrassment. Confusion. A sick sort of self-awareness.
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“No,” he muttered. “It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t seem fine,” Max said.
Lando looked at him then, and something in Max’s expression, too perceptive, too concerned, too close to seeing more than Lando wanted anyone to see, made him want out of the room immediately.
“I’m just tired,” he said.
Tom, to his credit, didn’t make a joke.
Eddie looked down.
Alissa reached for her water bottle and twisted the cap on and off without saying anything.
“I’m going to bed,” Lando added.
No one stopped him this time.
He grabbed his shoes from near the door, then thought better of carrying them and left them there instead. Sand could wait until morning. So could the weird conversation. So could whatever the hell was happening inside his own head.
He went upstairs two steps at a time.
His room was dark except for the low lamp he switched on beside the bed. Instantly, the space felt quieter than the rest of the house by several worlds. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it for a second, letting the silence press in.
Then he looked at his phone.
There was one new message.
His heart kicked once, stupidly.
He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed before opening it.
Valentina.
A number he had not saved yet, but didn’t need to guess.
The message was simple.
I arrived in my room. Thank you again for tonight. It was more fun than I expected :)
He stared at it.
Then, slowly, something in him softened.
All the irritation from downstairs, all the embarrassment, all the restlessness that had followed him out of the club and across the beach and into the villa, none of it disappeared, exactly.
But it settled.
Shifted.
Because he agreed with her.
Tonight had been more fun than he had expected too.
Infinitely more.
He looked down at the screen again, reread the message once, then smiled to himself in the quiet of the room.
And for the first time in a very long while, the thought of tomorrow felt like something worth staying awake for.
Author note : please don't forget to share and comment, I'm responding to all comments and dm, so please share your thoughts on this first chapter :)
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Green – OP81
Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Reader
Summary: Because jealousy is not something Oscar has mastered yet.
Part 27 to Let the Light in
︎▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။||||။၊|• 1:21
Oscar should have known.
It had never really been a question of if he would lose his composure—only when.
That even he had a limit.
That there was only so much he could take before something in him slipped—quietly, but completely.
Because there was only so much distance he could maintain. Only so long he could keep that careful, deliberate space between himself and you before it started to fracture.
And the truth was—
It hadn’t started tonight.
It had been building for weeks.
The stolen glances.
The almost touches.
The not-quite-quiet moments.
The limbo.
And tonight—
Tonight, he was already closer to the edge than he had ever been.
The adrenaline from Barcelona still pulsed through him, sharp and electric beneath his skin. A win hard-fought, earned corner by corner, wheel to wheel with drivers who never gave an inch. His body hadn’t caught up yet. His mind hadn’t slowed down.
It had just… shifted.
Rewired itself.
Because now, instead of the track—
It was you.
Across the room.
Golden under the shifting lights of the club, your dress catching every flicker, every passing glow. You moved like you didn’t feel the weight of every gaze on you, like you didn’t notice how people turned when you laughed, how conversations faltered when you passed.
But Oscar noticed.
He noticed everything.
And more importantly—
So did everyone else.
That was the problem.
At first, it had been harmless.
A conversation here.
A laugh there.
People gravitated toward you—it was natural. You were easy to talk to, warm in a way that drew others in without effort.
But then it didn’t stop.
One man turned into another.
Drivers. Sponsors. Strangers.
Talking to you.
Laughing with you.
Trying to hold your attention just a second longer than necessary.
Hands brushing your arm.
A palm settling briefly at your waist—
Lingering.
Too comfortable.
Each one staying just a fraction too long.
Each one taking just a fraction too much.
His jaw tightened.
He told himself it didn’t mean anything.
That you were just being polite.
Taht you always were.
But that didn’t stop the slow, controlled burn spreading through his chest.
Oscar stayed where he was, a glass of something cold in his hand, his posture deceptively relaxed. To anyone else, he looked the same as always—composed, detached, unbothered.
But Hattie knew better.
She watched the way his jaw flexed—subtle, but constant.
The way his grip around his glass shifted, fingers tightening once before settling again.
The way his eyes kept returning to you, no matter how often he forced them away.
“Try not to look,” she said quietly, leaning closer so her voice wouldn’t get lost in the music.
He hummed in response, noncommittal.
He did try.
For a moment, he forced his gaze away—focused on the condensation running down his glass, on the rhythm of the music, on anything that wasn’t—
You.
For a moment, it almost worked.
Until—
“Hi.”
You almost groaned at the familiar voice, but caught yourself just in time, a polite smile slipping into place as you turned.
“Hi, Lando.”
Oscar’s eyes lifted instantly.
There he was again.
Too close.
Too familiar.
“You look pretty like this,” Lando smiled, his gaze dragging over you in a way that made something in Oscar’s chest pull tight. The yellow dress. Your hair.
He remembered it.
This morning.
The way you had stood in front of the mirror, smoothing the fabric down your sides while he leaned against the wall, watching you in quiet appreciation.
You look beautiful. He told you.
Soft. Private. Just for you.
And now—
“Can I get you anything?” Lando asked, already leaning in, already closing a distance that wasn’t his to take.
You shook your head, lifting your drink slightly. “No, thanks. I’m good.”
Polite.
Always polite.
Oscar exhaled slowly through his nose.
Walk away.
But Lando didn't.
“I love this song,” he grinned as the beat shifted—louder now, heavier. “Dance with me?”
And before you could answer—
His hand closed around your wrist.
Not harsh.
But not asked for either.
Oscar saw it instantly.
His jaw locked.
The way your shoulders tensed, just slightly.
The way your balance shifted in your heels as he pulled.
The way your smile didn’t quite reach your eyes anymore.
“Lando—” you tried, voice still even, still polite.
You resisted—subtly, gently—but he was already moving, already guiding you into the crowd, too caught up in the moment to read you properly. Too pleased with himself to notice.
That was it.
Something in Oscar went very, very still.
“—Oscar, no,” Hattie said quickly, already reaching for him, sensing it before he even moved.
But she was a second too late.
Because he was already moving.
Everything else fell away.
The crowd parted without him noticing. The music dulled. The lights blurred into nothing more than flashes in his peripheral vision.
All of his focus narrowed to one thing.
You.
You felt him before you saw him.
It wasn’t logical. It never was with him.
But suddenly—
The noise dulled.
The pressure eased.
Something in your chest loosened.
Relief.
Then he was there. Close enough that you caught his cologne—citrus, something sharp and clean. Familiar. Grounding.
“Lando,” you tried again, firmer now, attempting to pull your wrist free—but between your drink, your heels, the crowd pressing in—
He didn’t budge.
And then—
A hand landed on Lando’s shoulder.
Firm. Controlled.
Unmoving.
Lando turned, surprised, eyes lifting to meet his teammates. “Oscar?”
But Oscar didn’t look at him. Not really.
His gaze was on you.
Steady. Assessing. Checking.
“May I have a minute?” OScar asked. His voice even. Too even.
The kind of calm that carried something sharp beneath it.
“No,” Lando replied easily, barely pausing as he glanced back at you. “I’m busy. Y/N and I are dancing.”
His grip on your wrist tightened just slightly—like it proved a point.
Oscar’s eyes dropped to it.
Then lifted again.
Something colder settling behind them now.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
The words were quiet.
Measured.
Final.
But there was no mistaking them.
Something shifted.
Not just in the air—but in Lando, too.
For the first time since he had walked up to you, his attention fully snapped to Oscar.
For a second, no one moved.
Your breath hitched at the intensity of it—but you felt safe.
Grounded.
Claimed, in a way that didn’t feel like ownership—just certainty.
Then, slowly, Oscar reached forward.
Not rushed or forceful. Just certain.
His fingers closed gently around your wrist, right where Landos grip had been, and with a small, deliberate movement, he eased your hand free.
Lando let go more out of surprise than anything else.
Oscar didn’t look at him.
Didn’t acknowledge him again.
His attention stayed on you—steady, searching—like he needed to make sure you were okay before anything else mattered.
And the second your hand was in his—
You didn’t hesitate.
Your fingers curled into his instinctively, like they already knew where they belonged.
Something in his expression shifted.
Barely visible.
But you felt it.
“Come with me?” he asked, softer now.
The way he only ever spoke to you.
You would have followed him anywhere.
You already were.
“What…” Lando murmured, more to himself than anything else, watching the two of you like he couldn’t quite make sense of it. Like he didn’t understand how easily you went.
How naturally.
Like it had never been a question.
The music faded the further you moved through the crowd, eyes following the two of you for a moment before sliding away again.
Voices blurred into nothing more than background noise, the heat of the room giving way to cooler air as Oscar pushed open the door to the terrace.
To your luck, it was almost empty.
The night wrapped around you instantly.
Quiet.
Still.
Barcelona stretched out below, city lights spilling across the streets like scattered gold. A few cars moved along the roads beneath you—distant, untouched by the chaos you had just left behind.
The door clicked shut.
And suddenly—
It was just the two of you.
Oscar didn’t let go of your hand.
If anything, his grip tightened slightly—like he needed the contact more than he was willing to admit.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his hair, the last of the adrenaline still humming under his skin. Not gone. Just redirected.
“I hated that,” he said finally.
You blinked, still a little breathless, your pulse not quite settled yet. “What?”
His jaw tightened, gaze drifting past you for a second like he was replaying it—again and again, unable to shut it off.
“Watching him touch you like that.”
There was no anger in his voice.
That was what made it worse.
It was quieter than that.
Sharper.
Your heart stuttered.
“I’m sorry,” you said instinctively, the apology slipping out before you could stop it.
Oscar’s grip on your hand tightened again—grounding, steady.
“It’s not your fault,” he said immediately, softer now, his voice low and certain as his eyes returned to you.
You looked different out here.
Quieter.
The harsh club lights replaced by moonlight, soft shadows tracing your features, catching in your hair, your eyes.
He took it in without meaning to.
“I guess…” you started, but the words caught somewhere between what felt safe and what felt true. “It’s because… I’m not yours. Officially, at least.”
He let out a quiet breath at that.
A small, humorless huff.
“Exactly.”
The word settled heavily between you.
Because it was true.
No one knew.
No one saw.
No one knew what you were to him.
How easily you fit into his space.
How natural it felt to have you there.
How you sounded when you laughed because of him.
How different he was—with you.
He looked at you then.
Really looked.
The way the moonlight softened you.
The faint flush still lingering on your cheeks.
The way your eyes held his, steady despite everything.
And something in him gave.
“I hate this,” he admitted, quieter now. “Standing across the room, pretending I don’t care who talks to you. Who touches you. Acting like I don’t—”
He cut himself off, jaw tightening.
You didn’t move.
Didn’t pull away.
If anything, you stepped closer—just a fraction. Instinct, more than decision.
“I don’t want to do that anymore,” he finished.
Your heart stilled.
There were only two ways this could go.
And one of them would break you.
Your fingers tightened around his, like if you held on hard enough, he wouldn’t disappear. Wouldn’t pull back. Wouldn’t leave you standing here alone with something half-said.
The city lights flickered behind him, but all you could focus on was him.
The way his composure was still there—
But thinner now.
Strained.
Honest.
I hated seeing him flirt with you,” he added.
“Why?” you asked softly.
His gaze dropped briefly to your joined hands—your nails pressing lightly into his skin—before lifting back to your eyes.
“Because you’re—”
He stopped.
For a second, it looked like he might not say it.
Like the words were too much.
Too final.
“…not mine.”
The words sat between you —too honest to take back, too heavy to ignore.
Silence.
But it wasn’t empty.
It was full of everything he wasn’t saying.
Your pulse was too fast now, your breath just a little unsteady.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that you could feel the warmth of him, steady and grounding, pulling you in without touching anything else yet.
“I want you to be,” he said quietly.
And there it was.
No performance.
No overthinking.
Just truth.
Everything in you stilled.
The fear—the hesitation—it didn’t spike the way you expected it to.
It softened.
Because this didn’t feel like pressure.
It didn’t feel like control.
It felt like something opening.
Like safety.
Like choice.
For a split second, everything in you hesitated.
Not because you didn’t want this—
But because you did.
Because wanting him had never been the complicated part.
Losing him would be.
Your shoulders relaxed before you even realized it, your body already deciding before your mind caught up.
And when you looked at him—really looked—there was no hesitation left.
Only certainty.
You smiled softly, turning fully toward him, closing the last bit of space between you.
“You already have me,” you murmured.
For a second, he just looked at you.
Like he needed to be sure you meant it.
Like something in him was recalculating—
And then realizing it didn’t have to anymore.
And something in him gave.
His hand came up to your face—not rushed, not uncertain—just firm enough to keep you there, his thumb brushing over your cheek like he needed something real to anchor himself.
He took you in like he hadn’t allowed himself to before.
And then—
His lips were on yours.
Not careful.
Not tentative.
There was nothing measured about it anymore.
Weeks of restraint—of watching you from across rooms, of holding himself back when everything in him had wanted this—collapsed into the moment.
His other hand slid to your waist, pulling you closer, erasing whatever space still existed between you like he couldn’t stand it anymore.
Like he wouldn’t.
The kiss deepened—urgent, but not uncontrolled.
Hungry.
Like he was making up for every second he hadn’t been allowed to touch you, to choose you openly.
And underneath it all—
There was still that steadiness.
That certainty.
The thing that made you lean into him instead of pulling away.
Your fingers curled into his shirt, grounding yourself just as much as he was, your other hand finding his wrist, holding him there.
He exhaled against your lips, breath uneven for the first time since you had ever known him.
That alone made your heart stutter.
Because Oscar didn’t lose control.
Except now.
With you.
Only with you.
His thumb pressed more firmly against your cheek, tilting your head slightly as he kissed you again—slower this time, but no less intense.
Like he was learning you without restraint.
And when he finally pulled back, it wasn’t far.
His forehead rested against yours, his breath still unsteady, his hands still holding you like letting go wasn’t an option.
“I’m done with pretending I don’t know you,” he murmured, voice low, rougher now.
A pause.
“Not when you’re the only thing I don’t want to lose.”
❁✿❀❁✿❀
oscarpiastri
oscarpiastri enjoyed this one
Liked by charles_leclerc, kimi.antonelli, olliebearman and 997’876 Other’s
f1updates: WHO is that?????
landonorris: 👍
ln4nation: nah bc why is lando liking comments under this 💀 osconation: and is it jus me or does he seem bitter...?!?!
oscarleclerc: he's probably sad that Oscar is no longer his 😂
papayaprincess: EXCUSE ME??? OSCAR??? SINCE WHEN???
gridgossip: not him soft launching like this?? CASUALLY??
oscarfan44: “enjoyed this one” ??? WITH WHO???
alex_albon: congrats mate!
pierregasly: well done! 💪💪
mclaren.4life: fifth slide???? HELLO?????
f1tea: he knew exactly what he was doing with that fifth picture.
user38291: THE HAND ON HER WAIST??? HIS SMILE???
paddockinsider: this is not a soft launch this is psychological warfare
f1girlie: face not shown but i already feel threatened
formula1memes: oscar: 🧍♂️also oscar: drops a girlfriend like THIS???
piastriswife: nothing comfirmed yet...
formula1memes: what, nothing confirmed yet? 👀 how is this NOT confirmation???
piastriswife: only a pic with woman, could be a friend
albonnation: jup, i hold my friends like this too 👍 suure 👍👍
f1fiesta: @.piastriswife i reqlly would love to live in your delusion as well😂🫠
raceweekend: he looks different lately and now THIS makes sense
kimi.antonelli: 👀👀👀👀👀
gabrielbortoleto_: soooo who is she?
user8821: the way he’s holding her… yeah that’s not casual
papayaorange: HATTIE KNOWS. SHE MUST KNOW
olliebearman: no tag? 👀
user5510: “enjoyed this one” sir we are NOT OKAY
gridwatch: someone find out who she is i’m begging
f1detective: already working on it
user6672: why do i feel like we all just got soft launched too
fanpage.mp4: she’s wearing his hoodie in the background of pic 2 I’M CALLING IT
user009: this man went from private to THIS??? overnight???
f1loverrr: he looks happy. like actually happy.
user7219: ok but the grip on her waist??? yeah he’s gone
tracktalk: not showing her face but showing EVERYTHING else
user444: i need names. background. linkedin. everything.
f1follower: SO MUXH FOR NOT TAKING HER WITH HIM TO BARCELONA!!! what a liar 👀😂
f1chaos: the paddock is going to be unbearable next weekend
User818: lando somewhere punching the air rn
papayateam: no because who let him post this and just disappear???
user999: he said “enjoyed this one” and left us to suffer
✿❀ Let the Light in ❁✿
I guess the cats out of the bag.... how do we feel about this?
taglist: @teamnovalak @anamiad00msday @engelsmoment @madd1115 @frankiejo04 @aerangi @dakotapaigelove @azldee @dazaisdogsblog @yumarkie @jennibahng @suns3treading @sassyangel16 @alwaysclassyeagle @moons-v @disappointednotsuprised24 @okcurran @esw1012 @okayarkay @sltwins @bhagyashreeghuge @mysteriousduckprincess @kay-bello @vinylphwoar @mclarensnumberone @taetae-armyyyyy @woninabillion04 @cherryhazee @shawnscurlz @csceclairs @daddyrafeslittleslut @theladybiers @piastripastry81 @be4rnellis @princessria127 @phosphen3-s @wiggly-yrath @artyyjia @chloclo @nilletellsstories @sunshinevansh @cherryniyaah @lora21 @marinasblogs-posts @blablabla2242 @dustyinkpages @applejackrootbeerhollis @pharmasennapuff @astrrlily @melissa66orion@dutchlionforev @gold66loveblog @bruhitsmoose @iceceweam9
emergency contact (and other poor life decisions)▸ will smith
PAIRING ▸ will smith (wsh2) x reader
GENRES ▸ fluff, wsh soft, childhood best friends → idiots in love, emergency contact, drunk calls, late night vulnerability, one bed trope MY FAV
SUMMARY ▸ the three times will smith calls you when drunk, and the one time it actually matters.
WORD COUNT ▸ 7.7k words
AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ sharks gameday!!! smitty beating WASHED ALLEGATIONS, smitty beating BALD ALLEGATIONS, 21 bday with the toffoli’s, hatty watch the last game?? this is will smith hopecore and he will score tn!!! (i love him i cannot deal) also longest fic soooo far yay!
the first time will calls you when he shouldn't, it’s at 2:47 in the morning. your phone buzzes against your nightstand far too loud and far too long enough to drag you out of sleep, the screen lighting up your dark room with a caller id you know far too well: will smith (contact name willy for nickname purposes). for a moment you just stare at it, half awake and half convinced you’re still dreaming. then your phone rings again. then buzzes a text. then rings again. which means one thing, and one thing only - will has either done something incredibly stupid, or he needs a ride home.
or possibly both. both was very possible if it was concerning will.
grabbing your phone, you mentally prepare yourself for whatever will, known resident troublemaker, has gotten himself into, and dragged you into by default.
willy: y/nnnnnn
willy: im slushed
willy: snow shed
willy: fuck
willy: slohed
willy: Y/n. I am sloshed. (sent with Siri).
you sigh inwardly, but you can't help the smile that sneaks across your face. this boy. you were sure if you searched up the definition of twenty-one year old drunk boy will's face and golden curls would be front and center on page one.
you: hello william
you: will u be needing assistance ?
willy: cant refd
willy: read
you: call me again maybe i'll answer this time
its not like this was entirely new to you. in fact, if you were being honest, it had become something of a pattern, or somewhat of an arrangement between you two. will gets drunk, will loses something important, will realizes he does not in fact know how to get home without assistance, and then, like clockwork, will calls you. you can recall the very first time it happened, back at bc when gabe perreault's sweet dulcet tones took over the phone and politely pleaded you to pick will up after one too many beers.
while you’re not entirely sure when you became the default solution to all of his bad decisions. you assume it comes with the best friend description, as for the last few years between will at the ntdp, late nights at bc, and throughout his rookie season, you two were solid constants in each other's lives. ever since your childhood you've been known as the "will wrangler," nickname a la grace smith.
but you suspect this dependency happened gradually. sometime between helping him move apartments last fall in san jose and the time he called you at midnight because he “accidentally bought too many groceries and they were going to expire.”
either way, the result is the same.
your phone starts ringing again.
you answer before the second ring finishes, somewhat groggy but still alert.
“hello, william.”
there’s a beat of loud music on the other end. someone yelling (asky maybe?) in the background. then, “y/n?”
his voice is unmistakably drunk. slower than usual, words slightly slurred together. signature drunk will.
you pinch the bridge of your nose as you sit up in bed. “yes. that is my name, that is who you called. where are you.”
“i told you,” he says, like this is obvious.
“you told me you’re ‘slushed’ and ‘snow shed,’” you reply flatly. “unfortunately, neither of those are locations.”
there’s a pause. “oh.” more background noise. someone laughs.
“i’m outside. it's cold. and i think someone stole my jacket. my new one! it's from zara and i was going to wear it to the game on-”
you close your eyes, cutting off the far too long rant about his new jacket. “outside where, will.”
“the bar.”
“which bar.”
another pause. longer this time. “…the one with the door.” you don't see his face but you know he's smiling.
this little shit. you drop your head back against the pillow. “fantastic.”
he laughs softly, like he’s pleased with himself. “you’re funny when you’re mad.”
“i’m not mad.”
“you’re a little mad.”
you swing your legs out of bed with a sigh, already reaching for the hoodie hanging off your chair.
“i’m tired,” you correct. “and you woke me up at three in the morning.”
“it’s not three,” he argues. you glance at the clock. 2:53 a.m.
“it’s basically three.”
he hums thoughtfully, like he’s considering this information. “i did just call to hear your voice but while you're here…can you come get me.”
not a question. not really. just…will.
you pull your hair into a loose ponytail, grabbing your keys off the dresser.
“text me your location then please.”
“okay.”
“…how do i do that.”
you stop in the middle of your room. “will.”
“yeah?”
“give the phone to someone else.”
you hear muffled shuffling on the other end. voices. someone saying “dude she sounds mad.”
then a familiar voice cuts in.
“hey,” macklin says through the phone, barely containing his laughter. “can you come get your boy.”
you sigh. “what did he do.”
macklin snorts. “nothing illegal.”
that does not reassure you.
“yet,” he adds helpfully.
you rub your forehead. “i’m on my way.”
in the background, you hear will again. “is she coming?”
macklin answers before you can. “yeah, smitty. she’s coming.”
there’s a brief pause. then will’s voice, quieter this time. “told you she would.”
you ignore it.
twenty minutes later you’re pulling into the dimly lit parking lot of a bar that looks exactly like every other bar in san jose that caters to hockey players with too much money and not enough sense. neon lights flicker against the windows, music thumping faintly through the walls.
and, right on cue, will smith is sitting on the curb outside the entrance. he looks exactly how you expected.
legs sprawled out in front of him, elbows on his knees, blond curls completely wrecked like he’s been running his hands through them for the last hour. someone has, in fact, stolen his new zara jacket. he’s in a t-shirt with his silver chain peeking out despite the cold, staring down at his dead phone like it personally betrayed him. looking like a kicked puppy.
macklin and a couple of the other guys are standing nearby. macklin spots your car first.
“oh thank god,” he mutters, nudging will with his foot. “your ride’s here.”
will looks up slowly. his face lights up. actually lights up. like someone flipped a switch.
“y/n!” he says, standing up far too quickly for someone in his current state. he wobbles a little. or a lot. macklin grabs his arm before he faceplants.
you roll down the window, smirking. “hello, william. your uber has arrived.”
he grins. “you came.”
“that i did.”
“i told them you would.”
macklin snorts. “he would not shut up about it.”
will ignores him completely, already making his way toward the passenger side of your car like a very tall, very drunk golden retriever.
you glance back at macklin. “he owe you guys money or something?”
“nah,” macklin says. “just his dignity.”
you laugh, fair, and quickly say your goodbyes.
will struggles, yet eventually climbs into the passenger seat, immediately slumping down like gravity has suddenly increased inside the car.
the second the door shuts, he exhales dramatically. “oh my god.”
you start the car. “what, you drama queen.”
“you saved me.”
you pull out of the parking lot. “from what.”
“them.”
he gestures vaguely out the window toward the bar. “they were being mean to me. and stole my jacket.”
“were they.”
“yeah.”
you glance over. he’s staring at you now, very seriously. “macklin said i can’t fight a bouncer.”
“…you cannot fight a bouncer.”
“i could.”
“you absolutely could not! you barely get into fights on ice… accept that you're just a lover not a fighter.”
he considers this. “okay maybe not tonight.”
you laugh quietly, shaking your head. there’s a moment of silence before he leans his head against the window. then, slowly, he leans the other way.
until his shoulder bumps yours. and then his head. rests there. you glance down at him briefly.
“will.”
“hmm…”
“sit up.”
“no.”
“you’re drunk.”
“i’m comfortable.”
he says it like that settles the matter. you sigh, but you don’t move him. instead you just keep driving, with the extreme difficulty. you sigh, but amusement settles deeper into you than actual annoyance. who would've thought - at the ripe age of twenty-one you would be playing chauffeur for your passenger princess best friend on a saturday night?
granted, there has been a number of nights where you are the one in the passenger seat, totally passed out and will to the rescue. one of those times was maybe last weekend after your girlfriends suggested getting a margarita. which turned into two. which turned into tequila shots. which turned into will holding your hair back while you became very well acquainted with the bush outside his apartment.
lets just say the arrangement between you two was more than fair.
for a minute, he’s quiet, only the quiet hum of your car and the radio playing softly filling the noise in the car.
then, like the nonstop yapper he is, will starts, “toff started it.”
you blink. “started what.”
“the argument.”
“what argument.”
“the one about penguins.”
“…what?”
“he said penguins are birds,” he mutters.
“will. penguins are birds.”
“they don’t fly.”
you press your lips together.
“i’m not having this conversation with you right now.”
he huffs, offended. “you never take my side!”
“because you are wrong. and usually are wrong.”
“unbelievable.”
you drive for another minute before realizing the car has gone suspiciously quiet. too quiet. you glance over. will is asleep.
completely asleep.
head still resting against your shoulder, mouth slightly open, breathing slow and even. mouthbreather.
you shake your head softly. “lightweight.”
he doesn’t even stir.
by the time you pull into his apartment complex, he’s still out. it takes a few attempts to wake him.
“will.”
nothing.
“will.”
he groans.
“we’re here.”
his eyes crack open slowly.
“…oh.”
“yeah. oh.”
getting him upstairs is a process. a slow, slightly uncoordinated dance involving a lot of leaning and one moment where he almost walks directly into the wall. god, what are they feeding these athletes?
after a while, you finally manage to get him inside his apartment. you think you deserve some sort of medal or nobel peace prize for the athletic feat you just accomplished, as will collapses onto the couch immediately. like a man who has completed a long and exhausting journey. you grab him a glass of water from the kitchen.
when you come back, he’s blinking up at the ceiling, and you're unsure any thoughts are being processed in his mind. “drink this.”
he takes the glass obediently. halfway through, he looks at you. really looks at you. and smiles. soft. a little dazed. “you’re the best.”
you roll your eyes. “oh, i know.”
he shakes his head slightly. “no, like… you are.”
you pause. something in his tone makes you glance back at him. he’s still smiling. eyes half-lidded and pupils blown.
completely, absolutely drunk.
“i’d marry you if i had to,” he mumbles.
you snort. “wow. how romantic. if you had to.”
he nods like he’s said something incredibly profound. “yeah.”
you take the empty glass from his hand and put an advil next to him. “go to sleep, will. don't forget you have practice tomorrow.”
he’s already halfway there. you turn off the lamp on the way out, closing the door quietly behind you. it’s only once you’re back in your car that the words replay in your head.
i’d marry you if i had to.
you laugh softly to yourself, starting the engine. drunk will says a lot of things.
₊✩‧₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧₊
the second time will calls you when he shouldn’t, it’s just after midnight a few weeks later. not 2:47 a.m. not drunk. just… quiet. very unlike him.
your phone buzzes once on the couch beside you while you’re halfway through an episode of something you’re not actually paying attention to. when you glance down at the screen, the name makes your stomach drop just slightly. willy.
for a moment you assume it’s another ride situation. maybe he lost something again. maybe he noticed you stole the fancy mixing bowl from his apartment the other day. maybe he locked himself out of his apartment for the third time this month.
but when you answer, there’s no music. no yelling. no background chaos from teammates. just silence.
“…y/n?”
his voice is softer than usual. tired and a little bit pained. you immediately sit up a little straighter.
“yeah, here.” you say. “what did you do.”
there’s a small huff on the other end. not quite a laugh. “hey, nothing.”
which, coming from will smith, is suspicious. “okay,” you say slowly. “so why are you calling me at midnight if you didn’t do anything.”
another pause. more silence. then- “just wanted to hear your voice…you busy?”
and just like that, you know. something’s wrong. sometimes you swear you knew will better than he knew himself.
you grab your keys before you even answer. “i’ll be there in ten.”
when you let yourself into his apartment, the first thing you notice is the TV playing game tape. paused mid-play. the second thing you notice is will.
he’s sitting on the floor in front of the couch, back leaning against it, long legs stretched out in front of him. a takeout container sits open beside him, half eaten. there’s another one on the coffee table in front of him. his hair is still wet from a shower.
he doesn’t look up right away when you walk in.
he’s staring at the screen, locked in. you follow his gaze. it’s the same clip looping over and over. him. missing coverage. goal against.
“…will.” he glances over.
his expression shifts slightly when he sees you, like he hadn’t entirely expected you to actually show up even though you always do. “hey.” it's despair and restraint all in one.
you drop your bag on the counter.
“you’ve been watching that the entire time, haven’t you.”
he shrugs, which means yes. you walk over without another word and sit down beside him on the floor.
you know will has always been in his head when he plays, inwardly critiquing every move he makes and overthinking almost everything. it was a flaw, but something you loved about him so much.
for a second neither of you say anything. the TV hums quietly. then you reach forward, grab the remote, and turn it off.
the screen goes black. will immediately protests.
“hey-”
“no.” your answer is resolute.
“i was watching that.”
“it’s midnight,” you say, setting the remote down out of his reach. “you’re not allowed to review game tape at midnight.”
“coach literally told us to.”
“warso did not tell you to spiral on your living room floor at midnight alone.”
he exhales, leaning his head back against the couch. “i feel like shit. i played like shit.”
“no you didn’t.”
“i did.”
you nudge his shoulder lightly. “you didn’t.”
he turns his head to look at you. “did you even watch the game?”
shit. you pause, directly caught in the act. meekly adding, “…highlights?”
he groans, but you catch a smile sneaking on his face. bingo.
“unbelievable.”
you grin. “listen, if you wanted emotional support you should’ve called someone who actually understands hockey.”
“i thought i did.”
you bump him again. “excuse you, rude.”
he huffs quietly, but you can see some of the tension easing from his shoulders.
for a few minutes you just sit there. talking about nothing. you steal a dumpling from his takeout container. he complains about it. you ignore him. you then notice how close you are, how side to side your thighs are touching but how neither of you care enough to move.
without really thinking about it, you shift slightly closer and rest your head against his shoulder.
he goes still for half a second. like he noticed. you wonder if it was a little too much, but he doesn’t move away. instead, after a moment, he relaxes again.
and his hand, absentminded, almost unconscious, comes to rest lightly on your knee. it felt right.
neither of you comment on it. neither of you move.
you lean into his touch, greedy for more warm contact between you two. "better?"
he turns his head a little towards you, his face inches away from your own. "much."
you stay like that for a while, just sitting on the floor. the game long forgotten. you try not to overthink it.
₊✩‧₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧₊
the third time will calls you when he shouldn’t, it’s 3:11 in the morning. you almost ignore it.
your phone buzzes against the couch beside you while you’re half asleep under a blanket, some movie long forgotten still playing quietly in the background. you groan, blindly reaching for it, fully expecting one of your girlfriends sending something stupid in your group chat.
instead the screen lights up with a familiar name.
willy
you stare at it, doing a quick fact check. 3:11 a.m. friday. sharks win last night. you smile, yeah, that checks out.
the call stops before you answer. then immediately-
willy: emergency contact willy: are you still that
you blink. before you can respond, the phone rings again, this time a facetime. you answer, propping your phone up on a pillow next to you and grinning. “will.”
the response is immediate. “hi.”
as he comes into frame, you notice he is very drunk. not just tipsy. not even “i’ve had a few.” extremely drunk: splotchy cherub cheeks, messy hair, pupils blown and all.
in the background there’s music, someone yelling, and macklin laughing next to him as will struggles to keep the phone up.
luckily for him, you were in a good mood. “william charles…are you drunk?” you ask.
“no.” a pause, but you see him immediately giggle.
then macklin’s voice somewhere in the distance, a flash of his brown hair. “dude you’re sitting on the floor.”
you laugh. “get off the floor smitty. where are you?”
“good question.”
“will!”
“here i'll show you." the camera was flipped to the back to show the bar but all you could really see was will's legs getting up from the floor after your scolding.
"bad angle smit."
more shuffling. then the sound of the phone changing hands. macklin appears again, with ekky next to him.
“heyyyyy y/n” they're both smiling, dazed, also obviously quite drunk.
“hi you two.”
mack starts, “can you come get him, he's starting to go up to random people here and yap about his goal earlier.” you hear a very close will shout "hey!"
“did he lose something again.”
macklin snorts. “his ability to stand.”
you grab your keys. “i’m on my way.”
macklin laughs softly, looking at ekky. “told you.”
and somewhere behind him you hear will say, very proudly, “she always comes.”
this time, when you arrive at the bar, he’s not outside. walking inside, the first thing you see is a booth in the back corner filled with hockey players who absolutely should not be trusted in public past midnight.
and right in the middle of them, will smith. sprawled across the booth like a cat who has fully claimed the furniture. his blond curls are wrecked, his silver chain glinting against the low bar lights, and he’s mid-story about something (probably retelling his goal story for the 30th time) when macklin spots you walking over.
“oh thank god,” macklin says.
will turns. his entire face changes. “y/n!” like you’re the best thing he’s seen all night. which is saying something considering the bar has neon lights and tequila. will was drunk and still looked good, how was this fair?
you stop beside the booth, crossing your arms, feigning strictness. “hello william, up to no good i see?”
he beams at you. “you came.”
“that seems to be a pattern.”
macklin leans back, grinning. “he called you three times.”
you look at will. “three.”
will shrugs. “emergency.”
“what emergency exactly?”
he pauses. “…i forgot.”
macklin snorts into his drink. you shake your head.
“okay. up.” will immediately obeys, the compliant man he is.
sort of.
he stands up, and then immediately wraps you in a hug. a full bear hug. arms around your shoulders, face dropping against the side of your head like you’re a pillow.
you freeze, taking in will's cologne and his tight grip around your body. sometimes, you tend to forget how absolutely clingy and needy will gets when he's super drunk. exhibit a.
“will…”
“hi,” he mumbles into your hair.
macklin loses it behind you. “dude.”
you shove lightly at his chest, but not enough to actually move him. “okay, hi. personal space.”
“no.” he squeezes you again, almost lifting your smaller frame off of the ground.
“missed you.”
you blink. “…you saw me like five hours ago. i went to your game. you drove me home.”
“still counts.”
you finally manage to pry him off of you. mostly. one of his hands stays hooked around your wrist and the other on your lower back like he forgot how arms work. the warmth of his touch makes electric shocks course through your body.
eventually, you get your thoughts in order. “we’re leaving,” you say to the group.
macklin salutes you from the booth. “godspeed.”
the car ride is worse this time. because drunk will has decided you are apparently his emotional support human.
five minutes in, he’s holding onto the sleeve of your hoodie with one hand with a grip like a baby.
ten minutes in, his knee is somehow pressed against yours.
by fifteen minutes, his head is on your shoulder again.
“will.”
“hmm.” his drunk mumble sounds extremely sleepy.
“you’re doing it again.”
“doing what.”
“using me as a pillow.”
“you’re comfy.”
you sigh. “that’s not the point.”
he hums quietly, clearly not listening. for a moment the car is quiet. then he speaks again, softly. like it’s just a thought passing through. “y/n, you know you’re my favorite person right.”
your hands tighten slightly on the steering wheel. “…what.”
he doesn’t even look up. still half leaning against you.
“like if i had to call someone.” he nudges your shoulder slightly with his forehead.
“it’s always you.”
your stomach flips. you tell yourself immediately, he’s drunk. drunk will says things. drunk will always says things. things sober will doesn't actually mean.
still, you hate that your voice comes out quieter than you mean it to. “that’s only because you make bad decisions..and i'm always there to help you.”
he shakes his head lazily. “no.”
“because it’s you.”
you don’t respond to that. instead you pull into his apartment complex parking lot.
“okay,” you say. “inside.”
he groans dramatically. “you’re bossy.”
“someone has to be.”
he smiles slightly. “i like it.” freak.
getting him upstairs takes longer this time, mostly because he keeps leaning against you. like gravity has decided you’re the safest place in the room.
when you finally get him inside his apartment he makes it to his bedroom and collapses, albeit very dramatically. you bring him water. he drinks half of it, then looks up at you. eyes softer than ever, a little unfocused.
“you’re the best.”
you roll your eyes. “yeah, yeah.”
he shakes his head. “no. like—”
he pauses, clearly searching for words. “you just are.”
you don’t answer. you just take the empty glass from his hand.
“sleep,” you say.
he doesn’t answer right away, and you're unsure he's even heard you. instead, just as you turn to leave and pat yourself on the back for a job well done, his fingers catch loosely around your wrist, not enough to stop you, really. just enough to make you look back at his form on his bed..
“don’t go yet,” he says, voice low and heavy with sleep and alcohol. his words are softer now, less sloppy, like even drunk he means this part. “stay.”
you glance down at his hand around your wrist, then back at his face. his curls are flattened on one side from the pillow, cheeks still a little flushed, blue eyes half-lidded and pleading in a way that would’ve been unfair even if he weren’t will.
which, unfortunately, he is.
“will,” you say carefully, trying not to let your heart get ahead of itself. “you’re drunk.”
he blinks slowly, considering that. “yeah.”
“and you need to sleep.”
“i can do both.”
despite yourself, a laugh escapes you. “that’s not what i meant.”
he doesn’t let go. instead, he shifts further onto his side, making space beside him with a sleepy pat to the mattress. “just for a little,” he mumbles. “please.”
you know you should say no. you absolutely, definitely should say no.
he’s drunk, and clingy, and warm, and looking at you like you’re the answer to a question he hasn’t figured out how to ask yet. this is dangerous territory, the exact kind of thing that gets messy. the exact kind of thing that makes best friends start reading too much into half-meant words and late-night moments. something you and will never did.
you know that.
and yet.
“…for a little,” you repeat, mostly to yourself.
his mouth curves, small and sleepy. “yeah.”
you sigh like this is a burden, like this is an inconvenience, like your heart isn’t already halfway across the room and you made your decision the second he asked.
“fine,” you murmur. “but if you throw up on me, i’m actually never speaking to you again.”
will smiles, all soft and dopey. “you love me too much for that.”
the words hit harder than they should. you ignore that too. it seems like recently you've been doing a lot of ignoring feelings when it comes to your best friend.
kicking off your shoes and stealing one of will's old bc shirts, you slide onto the very edge of the bed on top of the comforter, fully prepared to keep as much space between you as possible.
that plan lasts all of three seconds.
because the second you’re there, will turns toward you and immediately tucks himself in close, one arm slinging loosely over your waist like it belongs there. his face presses into your shoulder, breath warm through the fabric of your shirt.
you go completely still.
“will.”
“hmm.”
“personal space, remember?.”
“no,” he mumbles, already half asleep again. “you’re staying.”
like that explains everything. like that settles it. somehow, with him, it usually does.
you then stare up at the dark ceiling, listening to the soft sound of his breathing evening out against you. unfortunately for you, every point of contact feels way too noticeable. his hand resting warm at your side. his knee nudged between yours. the weight of him, familiar and not, all at once.
it should feel strange. it doesn’t. that’s maybe the worst part.
slowly, carefully, like you don’t want to spook either of you, your hand lifts and comes to rest in his hair. it just looked so soft and touchable.
his response is immediate, even half-asleep. he leans in closer with a quiet hum, curling into you like he’s been waiting for it.
something tight twists in your chest.
“you’re such a menace,” you whisper, though there’s no heat in it.
he only breathes deeper, asleep now for real. eventually, your eyes drift shut too.
the next morning, you wake up to sunlight.
and panic.
for one disorienting, horrifying second, all you register is warmth and weight and a body much too close to yours. you bask in it for a moment, how wonderful it feels to wake up like this.
then memory quickly rushes back in. will. bar. macklin. emotional support. favorite person.
right. fuck.
you blink the sleep from your eyes and glance down.
will is still asleep, sprawled halfway on top of you like at some point in the night he decided proximity was not enough and simply committed to full contact. one arm is wrapped around your middle, his face buried in the crook of your neck, hair a complete disaster against your cheek.
you should move. you don’t. instead, you lie there for a second much too long, just… looking at him.
at the slow rise and fall of his chest. the faint crease between his brows even in sleep. the way his lips are parted slightly, completely relaxed. the way he’s holding onto you like it’s instinctual.
like it’s easy, like you belong here.
your stomach drops. oh, no. no no no. absolutely not.
because suddenly all the little things from the last few months come rushing back with humiliating clarity. the midnight phone call just to hear your voice. his hand on your knee on the floor by the couch. the way he always calls you, and you to him.
the way he always looks for you first. the dumb, drunk things he says that you’ve been laughing off because that was easier than actually thinking about them.
i’d marry you if i had to.you’re my favorite person.it’s always you.
shit.
your face heats all at once. you are not doing this.
you are not becoming one of those girls who falls for her best friend because he’s clingy and affectionate and looks at her too long and says things he probably won’t even remember in the morning.
except, except you already have. that’s the problem.
the realization settles over you all at once, quiet and undeniable: you like will. not in the casual, “he’s objectively attractive and occasionally very charming when he wants to be” way. not in the easy, best-friend affection way. in the bad way. in the dangerous way.
in the way that makes your heart trip when he calls and your stomach flip when he leans on you and your whole body go warm at the idea that maybe, maybe, some part of him means it when he says it’s always you.
in the way that destroys year-long friendships.
you stare at the ceiling again, like maybe it’ll offer solutions. it does not. all it offers is morning light and the crushing weight of your own stupidity.
because of course. of course you’d fall for will smith. and of course it would happen like this, half asleep in his bed, with him clinging to you like you’re something he can’t quite let go of.
and of course, because the universe hates you, he chooses that exact moment to stir.
his grip around your waist tightens for half a second before he blinks awake slowly, head lifting just enough to look at you.
there’s a beat, and for a moment, fear courses through your body. every wrong scenario plays through your mind: he knows, he's going to see right through you, he's going to hate you.
yet, his sleepy expression doesn’t change. “morning,” he mumbles, morning voice rough and gravelly. shit, now you were even finding his sleepy voice attractive. this was so incredibly bad.
you clear your throat, praying your face doesn’t look as hot as it feels. “morning.”
he squints at you, then glances down at the way he’s basically wrapped around you. “…oh.”
you let out a breathy laugh that sounds nowhere near as normal as you want it to. “yeah. oh.”
but instead of panicking, instead of jerking away or acting weird, his mouth just pulls into the smallest, sleepiest smile. “you stayed.”
simple, dangerous. you hate how much that does to you.
“you asked,” you manage, but it's actually the only words you manage to get out.
he hums, like that makes perfect sense, then drops his head right back to your shoulder for one more second like he’s not fully ready to be awake yet.
“good,” he says into your skin.
and that, that is what really ruins you. because later, when you’re back in your own apartment replaying every second of the night before with a coffee going cold in your hand, there’s no use denying it anymore.
you have, very inconveniently, absolutely caught feelings for your best friend, and you have no idea what to do with that.
₊✩‧₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧₊
the fourth time will calls you when he shouldn’t and the one time it actually matters, you don’t answer. which, in retrospect, is maybe the entire problem.
it happens two weeks later on a random tuesday afternoon. nothing dramatic. no bar. no post-game chaos. no tequila shots or macklin yelling in the background.
just your phone buzzing on the kitchen counter while you’re halfway through answering work emails. you glance at the screen.
willy
you hesitate for a second. not because you don’t want to answer. just because lately after your little realization…things have felt different ever since that night.
ever since waking up in his bed with his arm wrapped around you like it belonged there. ever since, for the last 14 days, you've been making excuses upon excuses up to will on why you haven't been able to hang or make it to any games.
so instead of answering immediately like you always do, you let it ring out. your phone goes quiet. you tell yourself it’s fine, that he’s probably bored. or needs help with groceries again. or wants to argue about something ridiculous like whether penguins count as birds.
then it rings again. still will. you silence it. twenty seconds later, it rings again.
you stare at it this time, three missed calls, which would normally mean something. but you sigh, grabbing your phone and typing instead.
you: sry busy w work
you: if drunk, drink water and go to bed LOL
ok, cool, casual. you toss the phone back onto the counter, think about possibly going on do not disturb, and go back to your emails for about thirty seconds. then your phone rings again.
this time, macklin. your stomach drops immediately, shit maybe it was bad.
you answer on the first ring, “hello?”
“hey,” macklin says quickly.
he doesn’t sound drunk. which is worse.
“is will with you?”
you stand up before he even finishes the sentence. “no,” you say slowly. “why.”
there’s a brief pause on the other end. “he tried calling you.”
three missed calls. your chest tightens, and your mind goes to the worst.
“what happened? is will ok?”
“nothing terrible,” macklin says quickly. “just—he took a hit in practice. shoulder. trainers checked him out but he kinda freaked out after.”
“he kept saying he needed to call you.”
your heart stutters. “where is he.”
“locker room hallway,” macklin says. “he didn’t wanna go home yet.”
you’re already grabbing your keys.
“i’m coming.”
the arena is mostly empty by the time you get there. practice ended an hour ago. the hallway outside the locker room is quiet except for the distant echo of equipment being packed away somewhere down the hall.
you spot him immediately.
will is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, long legs stretched out in front of him.
not drunk. not smiling like usual. just alone and quiet… staring at the wall across from him and thinking. his shoulder is wrapped in ice and athletic tape peeks out from under his t-shirt sleeve. his curls are still damp from a shower, pushed messily off his forehead.
he looks up when he hears your panicked footsteps. the second his eyes land on you, something in his expression shifts.
it's immediate relief.
“hey,” he says softly.
you stop a few feet away, crossing your arms even though your chest still feels tight. “you could’ve called literally anyone,” you say.
he watches you for a second, then shrugs lightly. “i did.”
“you.” the hallway suddenly feels very quiet, the clatter of the equipment very far away. you open your mouth, then close it again. because he’s right, he did call someone, you just didn’t answer.
“macklin told me what happened,” you say finally, stepping closer. “how bad is it.”
“it’s fine,” he says quickly. “just tweaked it.”
you glance at the ice pack on his shoulder, and you're both thinking about his injury that took him out a few months ago. you hesitate for a second before sitting down next to him against the wall.
neither of you speak for a moment. the silence is heavy.
eventually you bump your shoulder lightly against his good one.
“dramatic,” you mutter.
he huffs out a small laugh, and it was good to hear his giggle again. “i panicked.”
“you get hit every game.”
“yeah but-” he pauses, then shrugs again. “i don’t know.”
you glance at him. “you don’t know?”
“ii just…” he runs a hand through his hair. “wanted to talk to you.”
your stomach flips. dangerous territory, but sober this time. you try to keep your tone light.
“that’s what teammates are for.”
he looks at you then. really looks at you.
“but they’re not you.”
that lands somewhere deep in your chest, and this feeling is exactly why you've been avoiding him for the last two weeks. you look away quickly.
for a moment neither of you move. the hallway is quiet except for the hum of the arena lights overhead. it feels strangely private, like the entire building has decided to give the two of you space.
will nudges your knee again. a small habit. one he’s had for years. you don’t realize how much it affects you until now.
“you know,” you say after a second, forcing some of your usual teasing back into your voice, “this is technically the fourth time.”
he glances at you. “fourth time what.”
“that you’ve called me in some kind of crisis.”
he snorts quietly. “this was not a crisis.”
“you panic-called me three times.”
“okay,” he says defensively. “maybe a little crisis.”
you tilt your head. “and i didn’t even answer the first time.”
he shrugs, like that part never mattered. “it never mattered how many times i called, you still came.”
the simplicity of it makes something in your chest tighten. you look down at your hands.
“yeah,” you say quietly. “i guess i did.”
another small silence settles between you. “seriously though,” you add, trying to sound casual and failing slightly, “you should probably update your emergency contact.”
will frowns. “why.”
“because apparently i’m unreliable now,” you say. “three missed calls...and mack had to call me today.”
he studies you for a second, then shakes his head. “no.”
you look up. “no?”
“no.” he adjusts the ice pack on his shoulder, then looks back at you.
“i like my emergency contact.”
your heart does an unfortunate little flip. you try to roll your eyes, but the smile still comes out. “you like having someone who will pick you up from bars and stop you from fighting bouncers.”
“that too,” he admits.
you laugh softly.
then he says something that changes everything. “but mostly i like that it’s you.”
he makes the words so simple, so easy. like he’s just stating a fact he’s known for a while. you feel suddenly very aware of the way your shoulder is still pressed against his. the way his knee is touching yours. the way he’s looking at you like this conversation means more than either of you is pretending it does.
you swallow. “will…”
he tilts his head slightly. “yeah?”
your brain runs through about a hundred possible exits. jokes about how his hair looks. deflections. anything that keeps this from becoming real.
but then you remember the missed calls. and the way he looked sitting on the floor when you walked in. and the fact that every time something happens: good, bad, stupid, drunk, he calls you. always you.
so instead you say the only thing that feels honest. “why do you always call me.”
he blinks like the question surprises him. then he lets out a small breath. “you really don’t know?”
you shake your head. his mouth twitches slightly.
“y/n.” the way he says your name feels different than all the times before, softer. “it’s always been you.”
your heart stops. or at least it feels like it does.
you laugh weakly. “that’s not an answer.”
he shifts slightly so he’s facing you more fully now.
“okay,” he says. “then here’s the answer.”
he looks a little nervous now, and you’ve never seen that before. not from him, not cocky professional player will smith.
“i call you because you always pick up,” he says. “even when you pretend you’re annoyed.”
you open your mouth to argue, but he keeps going. “and because you show up. every time.”
“and because when something happens, anything, i want to tell you first.”
your throat goes dry.
he shrugs lightly. “kind of figured that meant something.”
“will,” you say slowly.
“are you saying—”
he cuts you off. “i like you.”
just like that, no dramatic buildup, no grand speech. just will smith, your best friend, sitting on the floor of the empty arena hallway, looking slightly nervous and very sincere.
you blink, “you like me.”
“yeah.”
“like…like like?”
he smiles a little. “like i call you when i’m drunk, and when i’m freaking out, and when i’m bored, and when i probably shouldn’t. im pretty sure i like you a lot. and i have for basically only thought about you for the last 6 months.”
your brain is still catching up. “that’s… a lot of calls.”
“yeah,” he says. “good thing you’re my emergency contact.”
you laugh before you can stop yourself. “that is absolutely not what that means.”
he leans a little closer. “maybe not.”
your heart is beating so loud you’re convinced he can hear it. you stare at him for one second longer. then you sigh, and you shake your head.
“this is so inconvenient.”
“why.”
“because,” you say, rubbing your forehead, “i realized i liked you like two weeks ago and was planning to ignore it forever.”
will freezes. “wait.”
you immediately regret saying that. you wince, “…what.”
“two weeks?”
“will.”
“you like me?”
you groan. “oh my god, don't make it a whole thing.”
his grin spreads slowly, as you see his bunny teeth come out, dangerously. “wow.”
“will please do not make that face.”
“what face.”
“that one.”
“the ‘i’m winning’ face?”
“there is no winning here!”
“feels like winning.”
you shove his shoulder lightly, and he laughs. then the laughter fades into something quieter. he looks at you again.
“so,” he says after a second.
“so,” you echo.
the air is comfortable but charged with something new, and you're unsure on how to proceed with this new territory. you rub the back of your neck. “this is weird.”
he huffs out a quiet laugh. “a little.”
“we’ve been friends for years,” you say. “and suddenly you’re just casually dropping the ‘i’ve liked you for six months’ thing.”
“sorry,” he says, though he doesn’t look very sorry. “should i have made a powerpoint?”
you shove his shoulder lightly. “don’t push it. don't take that one good shoulder for granted”
“hey,” he says quietly. you glance back at him.
“yeah?”
“come here.”
you blink. “…i’m literally already right here.”
“closer.”
your stomach flips, and the softness of his voice makes desire run through your body. "look who's bossy now." but you shift anyway, turning slightly so you’re facing him more fully.
the movement puts you closer than before, close enough that you can see the faint freckles across his nose, close enough that you notice the way his gaze flicks down to your lips for half a second before coming back up.
neither of you say anything. will reaches out slowly, like he’s giving you time to change your mind.
his fingers brush your wrist first, then slide down to lace loosely through your hand.
your breath catches, and he notices immediately.
his thumb brushes across the back of your hand. slow, absentminded, like he’s been doing it forever. another second passes, then you tilt your head a little.
“will.”
“yeah?”
“are you going to keep staring at me like that or…”
his eyebrow lifts. “or what.”
“…or kiss me.”
that does it. the corner of his mouth lifts slightly in a smirk. “thought you’d never ask.”
his hand comes up to your cheek, warm and careful, like he’s still half expecting you to pull away. you don’t. so he leans in.
the first kiss is soft, almost cautious. like both of you are still adjusting to the fact that this is real. like you weren't just two best friends who admitted their feelings to each other just seconds ago.
his lips are warm, a little hesitant at first, but when you tilt closer, when your hand slides up into the curls at the back of his neck that you love so much, something in him relaxes.
he kisses you again. deeper this time. much more certain. like he’s been holding back for months and finally decided he doesn’t have to anymore.
you let out a quiet laugh into the kiss when his other hand settles at your waist, pulling you a little closer.
he pulls back slightly, smiling. “what.”
you shake your head, a little breathless. “nothing.”
“no,” he says, forehead bumping lightly against yours. “what.”
“i just,” you say, trying to catch your breath, “cannot believe this started because you’re bad at making responsible life decisions.”
he grins. “hey.”
“you panic-called me three times.”
“yeah.”
“and now you’re kissing me in a hallway.”
“seems like a good outcome.”
you laugh softly. then he kisses you again, quick and warm, like he just wanted another one. when he pulls back this time, you’re both smiling. the tension that’s been sitting between you for months finally gone.
you lean your shoulder against his again.
“so,” you say.
“so,” he echoes.
“next time something happens,” you say, nudging his knee lightly, “you should probably just text.”
he looks over at you.
“nah.”
“will-”
“calling worked out pretty well for me.”
you roll your eyes, but your fingers slide back into his without thinking.
later that night, your phone buzzes on will's kitchen counter while you’re standing a few feet away. you glance down at it.
willy
you look up at him from across the room. he’s already watching you from the couch, mischievous grin creeping across his face.
“really?” you ask.
he shrugs. “just checking if you’d answer.”
you roll your eyes, but you do. and somehow, that’s always been the point.
a/n: sharks win later I CAN FEEL IT
